Transitions
by Awdures
Summary: Sonic thought he'd won already. Knuckles thought peace and quiet had returned. Chance would be a fine thing! Mania adaptation.
1. Angel Island

_So this has been kicking about well started but in random chunks for some time know - first I was holding off to check Forces didn't contradict anything I was planning and then to check Plus didn't and then I sort of drifted off. But anyway. Well underway again._

 _No real 'version of reality' notes to add this time - except of course all of old 16bit games used 'Robotnik' not Eggman being UKSide, but I've come around... ;-) I'm assuming from trailers etc that the sequence is S3 &K, Chaotix, Mania, Forces (from younger Sonic's viewpoint anyway), ManiaPlus.  
_

* * *

Sonic skidded to a halt, cradling two full bags of still-steaming food in his arms to stop the whole lot being propelled onto the ground by the abrupt stop.

"Tails?"

The fox was nowhere in sight although the Tornado was still here, beneath its temporary wooden shelter outside the cliffside structure that was half cave, half ruin and, at the moment anyway, half _finished_. A pile of debris and broken objects lay outside – most of them ancient but utterly mundane, bowls and cups and broken tools. Sonic gave the heap a scowl as he passed, having spent a boring morning helping drag most of it outside when Tails decided that the place would make the ideal spot for the workshop he'd been talking about building.

Sonic was so-so about the idea – who wanted to stay in one place? But Tails was excited by it and so he'd helped. He did have to admit the fox was accumulating a huge amount of _stuff_ to go along with his growing technical skill and needed somewhere more substantial to keep it and work on it than the month-here-month-there way they'd been living as they rambled around the planet.

"We can still explore, Sonic," Tails has argued. "We just don't have to cart all this with us! I can build cool things so we can explore even _better_. It's not like you have to stay here all the time or anything." Sonic had smiled and agreed because he could seldom say no to Tails and because that ' _you_ don't have to stay' had made him pull Tails over to ruffle his cow-lick. "Course we can still explore, buddy. It's what we do!"

Now Sonic lowered the bags of food to swing loosely from one hand and stuck his head inside the cave-or-door-or-whatever. A string of aerials had been wedged into the cliffside above it and Sonic glanced up as he passed under them, since they looked none too secure.

"Tails? I picked up lunch!"

"Sonic! Over here!"

Sonic crossed the chamber cautiously, the floor was still littered with boxes and clutter not yet removed or sorted or stored. Some of it Tails had acquired himself, much was salvaged from Eggman's now destroyed labs and ships. Sonic had expected to find Tails in the process of sorting or setting it up but instead the fox was perched on top of a stool staring at a handheld screen instead.

He reached absently for the meal as Sonic deposited it on the table and returned his attention to the purple smear across the screen.

Sonic frowned at it.

"Did it get broken in the move? That sucks."

Tails shook his head and swallowed a large mouthful. "Not broken, that's what it's really reading."

Sonic started in on his own chilli-dog.

"Mmm. So what is it? Where is it?"

"I don't know." Tails put down his burger and tapped something on the screen, pulling up a map overlay. "I mean I don't know _what_ it is. I know where. I think."

Sonic surveyed the map. "That's a big load of middle-of-nowhere ocean!"

"Yeah," Tails agreed. There's not much out there, not even any shipping routes. But the energy signal's not coming from the surface." He hesitated and frowned uncertainly. "It _reads_ like it's a good ten thousand foot up."

Sonic grinned, his curiosity well and truly piqued. "So a mystery mountain in the ocean or something flying? Eggman? You'd think he'd know when to quit!"

Tails shrugged. "No idea. I did wonder if it could be Knuckles' island. That was plenty weird enough but this looks new. I bet Eggman's picked up that signal too though."

Sonic bounced on his toes, gulping the rest of his meal in two bites. "So let's go find out!"

Tails pulled his attention from the screen, glanced around the half finished workshop then back at Sonic and grinned.

"Right now?"

"Course!"

Tails launched straight from his stool into mid-air and shot past Sonic. "First one to the Tornado's a big loser then!"

Sonic was on his heels in a moment, and despite laughter and having to navigate the article-strewn floor arrived at the aircraft in the same breath as the fox who stuck his tongue out.

"I totally made it first this time."

Sonic eyed him with mock suspicion. "I demand a photo finish." But he couldn't maintain the pose for more that a few seconds before laughing

"Let's go."

Tails nodded and went about starting up the aircraft.

"How far is it?" Sonic asked over the sound of the engine warming up.

"Not far," Tails called back. "An hour or two."

Sonic grimaced. That _did_ sound like a long time to him. As soon as they were airborne and cruising he was casting about for conversation and they tossed theories back and forth.

Whether Eggman could already have recovered enough resources to build something capable of turning out that much energy and flying that high so quickly. Whether _finding_ something powerful enough to put out that much energy was why he'd been able to. Whether it could be something to do with that weird giant Chaos Emerald that Knuckles called the _Master_ Emerald, or something else to do with the Floating Island. They'd left it almost as much of a mystery as they'd found it after all and its guardian had been particularly unforthcoming in terms of any real information about it.

It was a little over an hour and a half when the first of their questions was answered as the silhouette of the Floating Island came into view against the endless blue horizon. Sonic frowned at it, realising rather belatedly that although they'd parted from Knuckles on reasonably good terms, he was far from sure the echidna would actually welcome them back as either visitors or would-be allies against any new threat.

Tails brought them in over the Island, his attention flicking from the tracker to the terrain.

"I'm sure we shouldn't have found the place this easily. Knuckles must have it out here in the middle of nowhere for a reason. But the signal's enormous. Whatever it is. D'you think Knuckles knows?"

Sonic shrugged, deciding not to share his misgiving about their potential welcome or lack thereof. "I bet he knows most things that go on on this island of his. Still... If it's that big.. Even if it isn't Eggman causing it the odds of him picking up the signal too... Can't hurt to make sure can it?"

"There, Sonic!" Tails yelled but Sonic had already seen them – a cluster of Egg Robos. He couldn't see what they were up to and Tails was already pulling up to miss them.

"I'm going for a closer look!" Sonic yelled against the wind and leapt from the wing straight into a run. He'd intended to attack at once, but skidded to a stop when he realised they were paying no attention to him whatsoever.

"Hey," he peered up at them. "A hedgehog could be insulted y'know!"

Over the clatter the Robos were making, Sonic didn't heard Tails touch down beside him until he spoke up.

"What's going on? Why aren't they attacking?"

Sonic shrugged. "Busy with something else. What d'you say? We try smashing a few, see if that gets their attention?"

Before he could begin to do so a rumble from above marked the arrival of a huge, claw-like digging machine which plunged into the earth as though there was no resistance at all and rose again almost at once, clutching a boulder-sized chunk of rock and earth and rising and accelerating away from then with the Egg Robos in a gaggle around it.

Tails glanced at his tracker. "That's it! Whatever they've got there in the source of the signal!"

Sonic saw no need to answer, he was already running. He couldn't reach the ship dangling the claw but leapt at the appendage itself which only made it sway dangerously. Tails swerved in mid-air to avoid it.

"Woah!" Sonic leapt aside as the swinging rock whiplashed crazily beneath the ship. "Okay, bad plan! Tails, can you give me a lift? We need to get this thing from above."

Tails swooped in and hoisted him into the air as the Robos rocketed out from under the cliff and towards the jungle.

"Knuckles is down there!" Tails called out suddenly. Sonic looked round from where he was trying to pick the best spot to leap at the claw and saw Tails was right. Knuckles was watching the oncoming Robos, poised to fight, fists raised.

Sonic had been on the wrong end of that stance all too recently and it was clear Knuckles had no intention of budging even if he had to take on the whole mob of oncoming attackers.

He looked up at the swinging chunk of rock and Sonic couldn't work out whether Knuckles actually thought he could grab and hold it or if he'd just misjudged the angle of approach but either way the chunk of rock smashed into him with a sickening crunch that sent him flying off his feet to land motionless on his back.

"Knuckles!" Tails yelled, sounding shocked and almost losing his grip on Sonic.

Sonic couldn't blame him, the blow had looked more than enough to be fatal and Knuckles wasn't moving. Sonic twisted free of Tails' grip and landed one strike on the nearest Robo before joining Tails at Knuckles' side. He was alive, Sonic realised with instant relief, his eyelids flickering on the edge of consciousness, no blood, no visibly broken bones.

"Stay with him," Sonic told Tails, "I'll-"

But the Robos had also stopped and Sonic hesitated, crouching himself preparing to spindash anything that thought it could come back for another go. He glanced at the others, saw Tails also readying himself to attack, Knuckles now struggling to sit up, propped himself on his elbows, glassy-eyed but still fighting to focus on the threat at hand.

And then the world… _shifted._ Blurring, spinning, colours and sound in twisting confusion and they were tumbling, twirling in the air.


	2. Green Hill

At some point Sonic realised the blur of colours was now only because he was spinning in the air and in the next second he had dropped onto his feet. He looked round quickly, fighting dizziness. Tails was beside him, looking queasy but unharmed. Knuckles was nowhere to be seen. The chunk of rock and dirt still swung from a claw and either his eyes were playing tricks or it had been glowing. The Egg Robos clustered around it.

No… Sonic realised. Not Egg Robos. These were robots he'd never seen before. Five different types and larger, faster. How had they been replaced so quickly? He frowned in confusion, which was only increased in the next second when he realised that although they still stood among trees and plants this wasn't the jungle of Angel Island but somewhere far closer to home.

By the time he processed this and looked back, the robots had taken off again. In their absence the sound of rushing water was the dominant sound.

"Where are we?" Tails asked, looking far too giddy to give chase at least for the next few seconds. "What happened to those robots? Where's Knuckles?"

"I don't know," Sonic admitted. "Maybe still up there on the Island? I'm sure he's fine."

He was in fact sure of no such thing but Knuckles _had_ been recovering in the moment before they had been – what? - transported? The echidna was clearly used to looking after himself and anyway if the robots were here with them it meant they weren't wherever Knuckles was.

Unless they bumped into him wherever they'd just raced off to, Sonic admitted to himself.

"We'd better get after that lot," he said. "I don't know what they dug up but if it can send us halfway across the planet like this it can't be good news."

"Halfway across the planet?" Tails repeated.

"Yeah. This is Green Hill. I grew up here. It's the first zone Eggman tried to take over."

Tails looked around. "It's nice, "he said. "Pretty. All the waterfalls and things."

Sonic smiled. "Yep. It's awesome. But look." He pointed at a cluster of bots, currently ignoring them. "How can there be badniks here again?"

Tails shrugged in turn. "When was the last time you were here?"

"It's been a while," Sonic admitted. "Not long enough for Eggman to be back here in force though!"

Tails looked thoughtful. "How did we get here?"

Sonic almost laughed. "You're asking _me_ what that crazy teleport thing was?"

Tails shrugged. "Just thinking. It felt instant. What if it wasn't?"

Sonic stared around as though the answer could be found in the landscape. It was an unpleasant thought that Eggman could have been merrily taking over here while they were… where? Nowhere?

He shook it off.

"Better make up for lost time just in case then!" He launched himself at the nearest badnik causing three more to turn on him, by which time Tails had leapt into the fight beside him, tugging one of them off its wheels to drop onto the carapace of the one next to it.

Sonic grinned up at Tails as he he finished taking out the rest. "Well _these_ haven't gotten any better!"

Tails touched down lightly beside him.

"Nope!"

Sonic frowned at the remains, nudging them with his toe. They _weren't_ any better. But the ones that had snatched the whatever-it-was had been. They'd been weird. And they _changed_. They'd still been carrying it, still been racing away when the whirling colours had cleared but they'd been different. Transformed.

"So what happened?" He asked the question aloud, hoping Tails would be able to at least offer some guesses. "To the robots we found digging. How could they change like that?"

Tails shrugged but he was smiling, pleased with the puzzle.

"And what did they dig up? It was what you were tracking right?"

Tails nodded, his curious grin only getting wider.

"I'm certain of it! Did you see what I did? I said it was a huge power source."

His face abruptly fell.

"We can't let them take it to Eggman!"

"Whatever it is," Sonic agreed. "Okay then. Ready to run?"

By way of answer of got a thumbs up and the whirl of displaced air as the fox span up his tails.

"You bet!"

* * *

Knuckles landed on his feet, staggering but managing to stay upright, in spite of the overwhelming temptation to sink to his knees and give into the roiling nausea and blinding headache. He closed his eyes to take some deep breaths but the absence of visual references only made the dizziness worse and he reached out blindly for support, finding a sturdy palm to steady himself against.

In the next second he had let go of it in horror, his eyes snapping back open. Wrong tree. Wrong _type_ of tree. There were no palm trees in this part of the Island. He looked wildly around. No palm trees like this in the jungle and no caves like this anywhere on the Island. Mind-bogglingly huge caverns with such gaping fissures and entrance-ways that enough daylight spilled in for the plant-life to almost match that above ground.

He wasn't on the Floating Island. He wasn't on the Island and he'd missed it. For long seconds amid the pain and nausea he'd missed it. Failed to notice the abrupt absence of the constant ambient chaos energy running through the ground. He was on the surface and he was alone.

Alone.

Why should that be surprising?

He frowned. His memory was fragmented, disordered – he'd hit his head badly. No… He'd _been_ hit. He'd attacked someone. Some _thing_? Intended to anyway. More than one of them. They'd… stolen something? Taken something from the Island...

Panic leapt to the forefront of his foggy mind. Not the Master Emerald! He scrabbled for awareness, reaching out through the confusion. No. It was there. Distant and uneasy but safe. Something else was wrong.

And he hadn't been alone. He screwed his eyes shut again. The hedgehog. Sonic. Sonic had been there. Sonic and Tails. Leaning over him on the ground. It hadn't been them who'd hit him though, had it? He hadn't attacked them? He couldn't think of a good reason for either alternative, but then neither did he have a reason for his presence alone here on the surface, or a coherent memory of how he'd been injured so that didn't really get him any further.

He'd been resting, almost asleep, and then there were robots, and then there was Sonic and Tails.

He had to find them, but this time he'd make sure he was certain of his facts before he did any more than that.

He moved off slowly, noting with relief that this place, wherever it was, had both rings and water. Perhaps the gaps would fill themselves in as he recovered.

The dizziness and nausea abated quickly, and the headache followed when he picked up the first rings he saw, but the uncomfortable sense of displacement remained. Perhaps it was also a side effect, or the unfamiliarity of these strange huge caverns. He hoped that's all it was and that perhaps it would fade as well. He needed his mind on getting back, not on what was distressing about being here.

He'd picked a direction more or last at random, unsure what exactly he needed to do. Find the robots? Find Sonic and Tails? Find some means of transport that would get him back to the Island? Even if he chose a priority there was no way to equate that to a direction.

He settled for seeking out any rising path. Somewhere out of these caves, somewhere with a bit of height from where he could get a sense of where he was and make a more meaningful decision on direction. He headed upwards. Slopes, steps, terraces, even sheer cliffs, he pressed up and up at the same steady pace.

He stopped briefly the first time he was attacked. A robotic bat. He smashed it but then froze in horror as a piglet who couldn't have been more than five years old tumbled out of the wrecked casing and fled for his life before Knuckles could explain himself.

Knuckles stared at the remains of the casing. Living things as power sources. He had though they'd ended that, he and Sonic. Had thought they'd put a stop to it. Had thought they'd undone his own catastrophic mistake in not recognising that evil technology's creator for what he was.

Was it still happening down here on the surface? Happening to _people_ not just wildlife?

He frowned and ran on, detouring now any time he saw one of the things. Breaking them open. Not all of them had prisoners but too many did. None of them could give him a coherent explanation as they staggered away and he couldn't bring himself to force any of those terrified people to stay and answer questions.

He pressed on, leaving the caves for higher ground and still running uphill. His thought chased themselves in circles in time with his running feet. How could this still be happening?

He hadn't _seen_ the end of the fight between Sonic and Eggman, had been forced by the injuries his misjudgement of the situation had brought on him, to let Sonic go on ahead. Without him. But Sonic had said it was over. Had returned the Master Emerald when Knuckles would have had no way left in the world to prevent him from stealing it away. Had smiled and waved and left.

Had come back. Just in time to see Knuckles knocked senseless and both Island and surface overrun with robots.

Knuckles shook his head as he ran, trying to untangle suspicion from cause and effect and coincidence, unsure any more which was which.

* * *

Sonic skidded to a halt when the slope he'd been running up levelled off and abruptly dropped away completely. Ahead, a rather unstable looking precipice barred further progress. A small but lively spring cascaded over the edge and a wooden bridge crossed the growing stream and continued out as a walkway. Pinioned into the cliff and zigzagging its way down.

Sonic surveyed it doubtfully.

Tails flew down, following it. He returned, looking equally uncertain.

"It's not rotten," he said. "But the rock it's bedded into is pretty crumbly."

Sonic tapped his foot, mentally tallying how long it would take him to reach the bottom by that route versus the odds of it giving way, versus how able Tails would be to grab him if it did.

He'd just decided to go for it when Tails landed beside him and pointed back the way they'd come, grinning.

"Look!"

Sonic turned in time to see Knuckles loping up the hill towards them.

"Knuckles!" he called in relief. "You're all right!"

The echidna was moving easily enough but there was an odd look on his face, Sonic realised. A wary appraisal, and he stopped halfway up instead of joining them at the top.

" _Are_ you all right?" Sonic asked.

Knuckles hesitated. "Tell me I wasn't wrong about being wrong about you, Sonic."

"Huh?" Sonic blinked at him. "You're babbling, Knuckles. Head still sore?"

"Who hit me, Sonic?" Knuckles' voice was level, but deadly serious.

"You don't remember?"

Knuckles shook his head, slowly, looking thoroughly reluctant to admit it.

Sonic made a face. "Well, you did get smacked in the head with basically a huge chunk of your island so I guess that's kind of understandable."

Knuckles stared at him. "A chunk of…"

"Yeah, the Egg Robos were digging for something. Guess they were a bit too impatient to dig it all the way out. Or we interrupted them. Or both."

Sonic fidgeted and rubbed between his quills. "Actually, I think we kinda mighta chased them onto you. Sorry?"

Knuckles ignored this. "What were you doing on the Island in the first place?"

"I picked up a weird power reading," Tails chimed in. "We couldn't think of many things that would be flying around up there, so thought it might be from your island. We thought Eggman might go looking for it and we ought to warn you."

His ears drooped. "Guess that bit didn't work out so well."

"No," Knuckles agreed, but his expression had relaxed into a wary smile. "Sonic was too slow to catch that one was he?"

Sonic bristled at once. "Oh you think? Well for Mr I-Can-Punch-Through-Walls, it was a swing and a miss that time wasn't it? What were you trying to do, stop that rock with your _face_?"

Tails looked from one to the other. "Uh, guys? Now _?_ "

But the argument was already over because Knuckles wore a look of such comical confusion.

"I don't remember." He looked astonished to hear himself saying it.

Sonic's spines settled back down and he chuckled. "Oh yeah. You said. Honestly, you're probably doing well to remember your own name. You were out cold. I guess we're actually lucky you're so thickheaded."

Sonic was smirking this time but Knuckles wouldn't be drawn.

"What did they dig up?" he asked instead.

Sonic made a face. "We don't know," he admitted. "It glowed and it seems to have sent us here. That's all we got."

Tails rolled his eyes at the hedgehog. "No it's not!" He ticked points off on his fingers. "It showed up to my energy detectors but the readings weren't anything like a Chaos Emerald."

Knuckles nodded. "I wouldn't have missed it if it was. A Chaos Emerald back here?" He blinked suddenly, looking confused. "Back… _there_. Back on the Island. Buried in the ground? I wouldn't have missed that. They're still scattered."

"Okay." Tails nodded "So, it showed up all of a sudden. Eggman obviously detected it too and thought it was good for something or other. When we interrupted them digging it up, something happened to it."

"Glowed!" Sonic put in. "Told 'ya."

"Yes," Tails allowed, smiling. "It _glowed_. There was a weird noise and we were here. And so were the robots. We think. Only they were different."

"Different how?" Knuckles asked.

Sonic shrugged and answered instead of Tails. "Just different. Bigger, faster, less… robot-ish. Could the Chaos Emeralds do that? Change them?" He looked from Tails to Knuckles. "Could the Master Emerald?"

"It _wasn't_ a Chaos Emerald!" Knuckles insisted.

Sonic waved this off. "If you say so, but _could_ they?"

"Just in theory…?" Tails suggested.

Knuckles frowned. "Like a robotic version of a super-transformation? With the Chaos Emeralds? I don't know. Maybe. Chaos Emeralds are… chaotic." He hesitated as if expecting to be picked up on stating the obvious but went on when no one argued. "Almost anything's possible but some things are more unlikely. I don't think so. And it _wasn't_ a Chaos Emerald. There were no Chaos Emeralds here." He winced visibly and corrected himself again. " _There._ "

Sonic ignored the repeat protest. "And with the Master Emerald?" he prompted instead.

"No."

Sonic and Tails both stared at him, but it was Sonic who spoke. "Any more detail coming?"

Knuckles crossed his arms. "No."

Sonic sighed. "Look, Knux, I don't want to stick a stick in a sore spot or anything but we _know_ Eggman has used the Master Emerald's power before. And so has Metal Sonic."

"No they haven't."

Sonic threw up his hands. "I've only just got all my fur back after getting toasted by the thing! You'd think I'd remember!"

Knuckles did not uncross his arms. "Metal Sonic was able to charge himself from the excess energy that leaks into the immediate vicinity. Eggman only used it as an amplifier for an existing weapon. That's not the same as being able to use its own power. Only a Guardian can do that."

" _Fine!_ We're playing the 'let's take everything Sonic says way too literally' game? So could a Guardian use it to do that? Change up a robot like that?"

"There are no other Guardians."

"Gah! Knuckles! Could _you_ do it?"

There was a pause and Sonic couldn't decide if that was because Knuckles was considering whether or not to answer or considering whether or not it was possible.

After a moment he said, "I didn't."

Sonic could have yelled in frustration, but before he could either do so, or spin at Knuckles out of sheer irritation, Tails had spoken up.

"Look it was miles away from the Master Emerald, Knuckles was right there with us, whatever was dug up was small anyway, and presumably no one else was anywhere near it that we didn't know about about. I think we can leave the Master Emerald out of the options anyway.

"Yes. You should," Knuckles agreed.

The was a moment's uncomfortable silence. Then Sonic shrugged.

"Fine. So are you coming with us to find out what it _was_ then?"

Knuckles was quiet a moment longer and his voice was still low when he finally did speak.

"I don't know what else to do. I shouldn't be here."

Sonic gave him a quizzical look. "You okay?"

Knuckles shook his head and the honesty of the admission made Sonic, on impulse, reach out in intended reassurance. Knuckles jumped and stared at the hedgehog's hand on his shoulder.

"You're worried about what might be happening back on your island?" Sonic asked.

Knuckles nodded slowly.

"I suppose. It doesn't feel like just worry though."

He shook his head abruptly and brushed Sonic's hand away. "It's stupid. Leave it. Let's just… Do whatever. Find those robots. Something they did brought us here so whatever it was it can take me back."

"And us!" Tails put in. "The Tornado's still up there!"

Sonic shrugged. "He's right."

Knuckles looked uncertainly between them.

"All right," he said after a moment. "Us."

Sonic grinned. "New word?"

"Don't push your luck, hedgehog." Knuckles voice was brusque again but at least he looked more composed. Sonic smiled and cast about for a direction that didn't involve an extremely dubious walkway.

"Okay. How about we… Uh oh."

Everyone turned at once in the same direction Sonic was looking.

"Wow," said Tails. "That's… Is that another Death Egg robot?"

Sonic stared at it for a split second longer, then grinned back at Tails in encouragement. "Don't know, don't care. It's going down either way!"

Tails whooped. "You bet!"

Sonic offered a high five before turning back around. "What'd'you say, Knu-" He stopped. Blinked.

"He started without us."

A few yards downslope Knuckles leapt into the air, twisted into an updraft and curved back around to position himself above the robot.

"Rude!" said Sonic, sticking out a hand for Tails, and accelerating instantly to whisk them both into the fray. He hurtled in at what, for the robot, was ankle height, releasing Tails as he approached to launch him into the air. Tails grabbed a metal arm and hauled at the same moment as Sonic cannoned upwards, striking the robot in its armoured shins.

It reeled backwards, and Knuckles, who'd dived down at the same moment, missed entirely. He landed in a roll, turning the momentum of the crash landing into a ricocheting leap andd colliding fists-first with the robot's back as it staggered. Sparks flew and Sonic ducked to avoid a whirling fragment of broken metal which would have shortened all his spines.

The robot pitched forward instead of backwards now and Tails narrowly missed being swatted from the sky by a flailing arm. He recovered his balance in the air and dodged around behind it to kick it solidly in the back of the head. Sonic followed up on the same spot and more sparks flew. Below him, Knuckles still had one clawed fist embedded in the backplate of the thing and was hacking through plating and wiring with the other, the robot's movement becoming more erratic with every blow. Something shorted out with a bang and a blue arc of electricity and Knuckles was thrown off, jerking violently as he fell. Tails snatched hold of one arm before the echidna could hit the ground but let go abruptly when Knuckles swung blindly for him instead.

The bladed arm shot out again and Sonic flung himself away from the robot to tackle Tails out of the way. They tumbled onto the ground, Sonic trying to keep track of everything that was going on around them.

The robot was out of control now, stamping around almost at random. Knuckles had ended up somewhere under its feet, narrowly avoiding getting trodden on, as much by luck as judgement as far as Sonic could tell.

"Sonic!" Tails looked like he wanted to close his eyes. "He's going to be flattened!"

"I'll get him," Sonic assured him, darting forward, eyes everywhere at once. It was easy enough to him to dodge but however Knuckles was managing it without even having made it back to his feet couldn't last.

Sonic put on a spurt as one boot came down squarely above the echidna

And then skidded to a stop because, impossibly, Knuckles had _caught_ it. Flat on his back and face turned away from the shower of sparks raining down from the damaged leg, he was holding off the descending metal boot with both hands. Sonic caught himself spectating and leapt back to it, ducking underneath and rocketing upwards in a spin, taking off the leg at the knee. The robot hopped once, looking entirely ridiculous and then went tumbling back down the slope.

Sonic landed beside Knuckles who was still holding a large section of robot leg as though he were ever so slightly surprised to find the rest of it missing.

"You can probably get rid of that now," Sonic suggested.

Knuckles looked from the limb to Sonic and back again then heaved it away towards the rest of the wreckage. The bang that followed was out of all proportion and the ground shook hard enough to send Tails into the air and Sonic onto his backside.

"What the?" But they were already falling and Sonic had thrown up his hands instinctively and Tails had grabbed them but there was barely any time to slow down and all three of them landed in a heap halfway down the crevice that had opened up.

Somewhere even further down, the robot still sparked and they could hear Eggman shouting, from inside it, but Sonic's ears still rang too much to catch what he was saying.

And then the world was spinning again.


	3. Chemical Plant

Something cold touched the back of Knuckles' neck and he ducked instinctively, spun round, swung for whatever unseen attacker had managed to get so close. He stopped abruptly at the realisation that it was only something dripping from above and that, furthermore, Sonic was laughing at him.

"Jumpy much?"

Knuckles glared at him and Sonic subsided. "Don't worry, Knux, I've been here before. No problem."

Sonic lifted one foot in preparation to speed off without waiting for an answer but instead squealed loudly and ducked himself as he also got dripped on. This time both Tails and Knuckles laughed as he shook out his fur and spines. It looked so undignified it was impossible not to.

Tails looked up curiously. "I don't think it's anything poisonous. It doesn't sting does it?"

Knuckles shook his head.

"Oh great, that's a comfort," Sonic griped. "Can we just get going?

Knuckles looked at him, wondering how he'd already decided a direction with no clues in sight.

"Go where?"

Sonic shrugged. "Dunno. Wherever. Somewhere with some answers."

Knuckles frowned. The hedgehog clearly had no idea at all in spite of his enthusiasm to move on. He tapped his foot then spoke again.

"Unless you think that an explanation will just appear into thin air right here?"

Knuckles didn't of course but couldn't help looking around anyway. It was evening but he hadn't noticed it because of all the artificial light. Huge buildings surrounded them, tower blocks and industrial sites and pylons criss-crossing and climbing to the sky. It was between two of these that the leaky pipe which had dripped on them stretched. The air was damp and cold in spite of the steam that rose from some of the machinery around them, and it stank.

A shudder which had nothing to do with the drips or the temperature, ran down Knuckles' spine.

"No," he said, making sure none of of the tremor reached his voice. "Let's not stay here."

He moved off but had only gone two paces when Sonic was ahead of him again and grinning.

"You know what the fastest way through here is?"

Almost grateful for an excuse to be annoyed instead of unnervingly anxious, Knuckles shot back at once.

"And how would I know that, hedgehog?"

Sonic ignored the irritation in his voice completely.

"Hedgehog is right. Hedgehog is absolutely the fastest way through here. And hedgehog halfpipe too, not plodding on pavements. Want me to show you?"

Tails grinned. "I do. I remember!"

Knuckles did not like the look of active anticipation in either pair of eyes looking at him.

"Explain."

Sonic grin only widened at the demand.

"The pipes are a shortcut. They're awesome-steep. Super-fast. I can give you a tow..."

Tails had already taken hold of Sonic's proffered arm, their hands interlocked around each other's wrists in a way which looked practised. Knuckles eyed the pipes. They were wide enough to run on, even three abreast. For a moment the desire to be out of here as quickly as possible weighed against his dislike of putting himself literally into the hedgehog's hands.

He sighed and stretched out his own hand.

"If you take my arm off, I _will_ take your head off with the other one."

Sonic only grinned wider and adjusted his grip.

"I won't. We got this. Run!"

Knuckles had to admit that the acceleration was within the bounds of sanity, far less than he'd seen Sonic deploy. It was just that it didn't stop. They were going faster and faster and his feet were only touching the ground every second or third step and the slipstream tugged at his quills, threatening to either yank his head back or pull him right off the ground. He ducked into it instead, shooting a glance across at Tails.

The fox was wasn't even trying to run. Instead he was propelling himself along as though flying at ground level, his toes just barely skimming the ground. He appeared entirely comfortable. Knuckles looked back in the direction they were running just in time as the pipe plunged downwards. He fought the urge to struggle free as he stomach dropped away with it, left at the top perhaps. He gritted his teeth and altered the angle of his quills thinking perhaps Tails was onto something. He felt the change instantly, his whole body pitching forward, his feet only touching the ground as intermittent course correction to stay in position with Sonic.

The hedgehog glanced round, pleased surprise on his face.

"That works! Whatever you're doing, do that."

And he accelerated _again_.

They hurtled round a loop and Knuckles lost contact with the pipe entirely.

Tails whooped, and adrenaline snatched a yell from Knuckles which was only half alarm.

Sonic laughed.

"Yeah! We got this!"

It crossed Knuckles' mind to ask _where_ Sonic thought he was going, however fast it was he was likely to arrive there, but the speed whipped the words from his mouth unsaid. In any case, part of the question was answered as the pipe dived down again. It levelled out so abruptly that Knuckles stumbled, only sheer momentum and the constant tug onwards letting him get his feet back under him. They hurtled through an opening that barely cleared their heads and they were inside, heat hitting them like a wall.

Knuckles was reluctant to look around, afraid that moving his head too much would upset the fragile equilibrium he was managing to maintain on this harebrained ride that he'd somehow got himself involved in. Distantly though he was aware of the clutter of pipes, the heat, the even worse smell, and the noise. Machinery flashed by on either side, pools and vats of steaming goo glittered evilly in the corner of his vision. He had to fight the temptation to close his eyes. There was no way this kind of speed could be safe in here.

Sonic had apparently come to the same conclusion and the deceleration was shockingly fast. Knuckles barely stayed upright, boots offering little purchase on the slick metal. He flung out his arms and flared his spines and somehow stayed upright, though muscles protested up and down his legs and spine.

Sonic had also skidded to a halt, though he'd seemed more prepared and had twisted into it, flinging out his arms to finish with a flourish and facing back the way they'd come. Tails had ended up on his backside but was laughing, clearly unhurt.

Sonic looked around. "Well the decorating hasn't improved."

"This was the plan?" Knuckles asked incredulously. "Come _in_ here? Into this..."

He failed to find an adequate word. He followed Sonic's gaze, looking around. The place was deeply oppressive and he couldn't begin to understand how the hedgehog was still smiling. For himself, Knuckles felt as though the sheer weight of metal around them was pressing in on him. No daylight, no starlight, not even any bare earth to let you know the rest of the world existed. Not a single, non-artificial thing in sight apart from them.

Sonic stopped smiling.

"Woah. Knuckles? You're looking a bit pale round the quills there, y'know?. Motion sick? Sorry about that." In spite of his words, he'd reached for Knuckles' arm again. Surely he didn't intend to carry on running did he? Knuckles stepped out of reach.

"I'm not ill."

Sonic stared at him a moment then shrugged. "Okay. If you say so. And yeah, this was the plan. We know Eggman's involved. The twirly-whatever-thing lands us right on his doorstep. _Obviously_ the thing to do is ring the doorbell, right?"

Knuckles looked up at the dizzying towers of pipes. Sweat dampened his fur and his breathing had taken longer to slow down from running that it should have. He hoped he'd told Sonic the truth.

"This is Eggman's?" he asked, trying to pull some focus back together.

"Yep." Sonic said. "Grim huh?"

"It's horrible."

"Yeah, and that. It's one of the places I never managed to quite get rid of him from. But that means if there's some secret he's keeping, there's a chance he's keeping it here." Sonic smiled again. "So, y'know, always an upside!"

"It smells though," Tails put in. "Really really smells."

Sonic dropped a hand on Tails' shoulder and squeezed. "Yep. Still stinks."

The fox leaned into Sonic and smiled. "Bet if there's something in Eggman's computers about what's going on I can find it though."

"I bet you can too. Onwards?" Sonic waved at the route ahead where the reasons for their stop was obvious. This was an area for caution over speed. A place designed for robots and automation, not people. Heavy machinery cycled around and up and down in a shifting pattern that would crush any living thing that mis-stepped here. Knuckles tracked it with his eyes, warily, attentively, seeking a pattern that would allow a safe traversal. He was surprised, although he possibly shouldn't have been, to find the hedgehog doing the same.

After a moment Sonic pointed.

"There, there, theeeennnn _there,_ " he said, in rhythm with the shifting system.

Knuckles nodded, still watching the movements. "I agree."

Sonic gave a gasp of shock that made Knuckles turn in alarm to see what had happened, only to find the hedgehog laughing.

"You _agree_? With a _hedgehog_ plan?"

"Shut up, Sonic," Knuckles said turning back to the route ahead. "Are we doing this or not?"

"We are. Tails? You see it?"

"Yup. No problem."

They stepped forward within a pace of each other but were only a few steps on before the screech of metal and the slam of a closing barrier behind them made them turn again.

"Uh oh," said Sonic, and for the first time Knuckles thought he sounded like he genuinely understood this place was dangerous. He was also staring down through the metal grating as though expecting it to catch fire beneath him. Knuckles looked down just as Sonic looked up and the hedgehog's eyes were as wide as Knuckles as ever seen them.

"Move!" he said. "Move movemove. Up. Go. Move!"

Knuckles was about to ask what the problem was but a gurgling, rushing sound answered him before he could open his mouth. Not fire then. Rather the opposite. Or given the vile, chemical reek of this place, something worse.

He eyed their route, picked his moment and jumped. Paused. Jumped again.

Sonic leapt past him, barely reaching the next safe landing spot as a shifting, twisting construction swung inexorably past them. Tails shot through the gap, catching Sonic's wrist and dragging him higher. Sonic dropped onto another sliding metal block and Knuckles paused, below him, waiting for the right alignment of the machinery to dodge up and past it.

"Faster faster faster!" Sonic shouted, all but hopping on the spot and staring at the blocked way ahead while he waited for the next window of opportunity.

"We can't go any faster, Sonic," Knuckles snapped. He glanced down to monitor the progress of the rising liquid beneath them. Was it toxic? If it was then they had a choice between getting crushed or poisoned because it was going to outpace them and soon.

Sonic had seen his opportunity and leapt neatly through the next gap, grabbing Tails as he went and getting hauled up further in return.

"Move, Knuckles!"

Knuckles ignored the urging, despite the temptation and waited for the right moment, but the lurid liquid had rushed up past him in the meantime and his jump was shortened abruptly as he was submerged. He fought down what would have been a startled gasp and lashed out for the rising block, intending to get a grip on it with his claws. Instead they slipped away, too little momentum and too strong and slick a surface. He fell back, paddling his legs to keep from sinking too far and landed back on the twisting machinery he'd just jumped from.

Somewhere up above him a splashing noise indicated the liquid had reached Sonic and Tails but whether they were all right or not would have to wait. Knuckles propelled himself off the machinery again, half jumping, half swimming and reached the next safe spot and the next.

He needed to breathe but this block was rising and the liquid no longer as dark, light from above filtered through and he jumped for the clear air above and found Sonic's and Tails' hands hauling him up and over the edge of the shaft.

He shot to his feet and looked back. The pink-tinged liquid was no longer rising, though another vat of it lay directly ahead. Sonic was panting and Tails wide-eyed and all three of them stood there for several seconds before anyone moved or spoke.

"Now we all stink." Sonic's voice shivered in spite of the muggy heat coming off the machinery and Tails also leaned into him as though for warmth.

Knuckles watched the two of them a moment, unsure of either the route or whether he should respond to the remark itself, or the near disaster.

"We do," he agreed after a moment and walked across to the edge of the reeking pool, assessing the distance across. Floating robotic devices moved back and forth across the surface, sampling or treating or collecting the stuff. He wondered if they'd hold their weight if the jump was too far.

It was the only way forward and after a moment Sonic joined him at the edge. Knuckles looked round and Sonic pulled a disgusted face.

"Tails, can you get us over?"

Tails took off at once.

"Sure."

"Take Sonic over," Knuckles said. "I can make it."

Sonic shrugged and Tails grabbed him as instructed. Knuckles took a running jump and angled his spines to a glide to lengthen it. He landed neatly beside them and Sonic grinned and moved off again without comment.

As they moved further into the plant the number of defensive bots increased and it became obvious that everyone was starting to tire. When Sonic jumped a split second too late at one of the flying caterpillar-style bots and was only saved from a nasty electrical shock by Knuckles grabbing his ankle mid-leap and dragging him back, they called a halt.

Sonic led them into a storage area of some kind. There were crates and barrels everywhere but they were empty and no bots patrolled it.

"We should keep going. I'm not tired," said Tails, though the fact he stumbled over the rim of the airlock-style door put the lie to his words.

"Uh huh," said Sonic. "Me neither. Natch." He winked. "Knuckles? You tired?"

"Yes."

Sonic looked strangely deflated at the admission. Knuckles didn't add his doubts as to whether he'd be able to rest here, regardless of weariness.

"Oh," said Sonic. "Well there we are then. We stop for a kip. It's been a long day after all." He frowned. "Or… has it been a day? Less? More? It's… weird."

Knuckles looked around doubtfully. "Is it safe here?"

Sonic shrugged. "Safer than falling asleep and then into a bubbling pit of chaos-knows-what, or fighting whatever all these extra bots are building up to, with everyone strung out, yeah. We can take turns. I'll go first."

Knuckles considered objecting but instead lay down. He might not be able to sleep, but he could rest. Could slow his breathing and relax his limbs and empty his mind. It wasn't easy. He was far, far further from home than he should be and everything felt wrong, but he could put it aside, after a fashion and rest.

He wasn't sure how long it was when he heard Sonic approaching him again. He sat up.

Sonic blinked at him. "Were you even asleep at all? Or have you got like super guardian-ish senses for waking you up if someone gets too close?"

Before Knuckles could decide on an answer Sonic had raised his hands. "Right, no ask-y questions about guardian-y stuff. Got it."

Knuckles hesitated.

"I was awake."

Sonic gave him a thoughtful look but didn't ask whether that meant 'already' or 'all the time'.

"Okay," he said instead. "Wake Tails when you get too sleepy. Tell him to wake me after an hour."

Knuckles nodded, not sleepy in the slightest. He felt better sitting up. He was still resting after all. Watchful but still. Calm in the absence of any immediate threat but alert enough to be safe from any that should come. He wasn't home, the Master Emerald was not at his back, but even so it was there at the edge of awareness. In the quiet he could find it. Soothing. Familiar. Restful. And there was something familiar too about this sitting, and waiting, and watching.

He didn't wake Tails, and eventually Sonic stirred first, hours later. Blinking awake in the not-daylight of the florescent lighting. He rolled over onto his hands and knees then sat back on his heels before getting to his feet.

"You didn't swap." Sonic looked puzzled, almost worried.

Knuckles stood and stretched. "I wasn't sleepy."

"You said you were tired." It sounded almost like an accusation and Knuckles frowned.

"I was. But I wasn't sleepy. And now I'm neither."

It was true, although Sonic shook his head looking confused. Knuckles could feel the faint scratchiness of lack of sleep somewhere behind his eyes, but he wasn't physically weary any more and it would be a long time before he was forced into sleep if he didn't want to.

Sonic stared at him, another question obviously forming, but he bit it back.

"Your call." He turned away. "Hey, Tails, wakey wakey."

Tails mumbled and blinked and wriggled his way awake and sat up looking at them.

"I didn't take a turn," he protested.

"No need," Sonic grinned. "You're up first next time, okay?"

Tails nodded. "So are we hitting the computer centre?"

Sonic nodded. "We can't be far, the security was getting tighter every step until we stopped. I'm amazed we didn't get found in here.

"Nothing in here worth guarding," Tails guessed aloud. "Everything's empty."

Sonic nodded. "For now. Best move before they decide it needs filling up!"

Tails bounced to his feet. "I hope there's breakfast they next place we end up."

Sonic grimaced. "Yeah. I could eat a whole trolley of chillidogs."

"Not for breakfast!" Tails laughed.

"Absolutely for breakfast!"

"Can we move?" Knuckles had only realised how hungry he was himself when the discussion had started and he could have done without it.

Sonic glanced over. "Sure. Let's go!"

And they were running again, back on the pipes and up and over the now variously coloured chemical vats beneath them, until without warning the pipe they were currently occupying trembled violently in time with a deep rumbling sound from somewhere above.

Sonic looked around, as he came to a hasty stop. "That can't be good."

Knuckles dropped warily into a crouch ready to fight or run or jump, or for a plunge into the liquid beneath them. Beside him Tails looked ready to leap into the air and Sonic was crouched in a pose Knuckles was learning to associate with the most rapid of acceleration.

He didn't have more than a split second to assess it though because Sonic was already moving and so was something else and Knuckles was tumbling backwards as Sonic had rammed straight into both him and Tails, shoving them out of the way of a huge ball-like machine. It plunged into the vat below the current set of pipes they'd been manoeuvring on and Tails shot into the air with a wail as he was splashed.

"Ow! That stuff _does_ sting!"

The robot launched upwards again, this time encased in a film of the stuff.

"Tails, are you okay?" Sonic shouted, warily watching the device manoeuvre.

"Yeah. Tails scowled down at it. "Be careful."

Before anyone could answer the was a sharp zap and the film of chemicals splattered away from the device. Knuckles flung himself flat to avoid it and found his faces inches away from a vat of the stuff. He jumped back to his feet. Sonic and Tails had also managed to dodge and Sonic was again crouched to leap. Knuckles gave him a half second head start to avoid any repeat of the fiasco in the hills then followed him into the attack.

Three blows from three separate directions rocked the device as Tails also dropped down on it from above. It dived down into the pool of chemicals, circling like a shark.

"Don't get-"

"—above it. I can work that out for myself, Sonic!" Knuckles snapped.

"-caught up on it," Sonic corrected, circling in the opposite direction to the device. "Get dragged down into that stuff and it's not going to end well."

Knuckles nodded sharply then leapt further clear as the robot surged up into the air once again, splashing chemicals as it went and thumping down hard enough to make the pipe shake and Sonic stagger as he launched himself. He glanced off doing no real damage and landed reeling. Knuckles flung himself forward, pushing Sonic clear with one hand and swinging for the device with the other. Tails gave it a strike in passing and ricocheted off, recovering himself in the air and grabbing Sonic in the same movement. Scooping him into the air to attack from above.

Caught top and bottom the device cracked apart with in a brief flower of strange coloured flame that burned out almost before it had registered on Knuckles' vision. He jumped back, in case of left over chemicals, or toxic smoke but Sonic and Tails seemed unconcerned, already celebrating.

"That must have been guarding something important."

Tails ran off the pipes back onto a heavy metal walkway. The chemicals in the vats here were viscous, gel-like, even rubbery, though they stank just as evilly. Tails eyed a hatch in the floor.

"Down there?" Knuckles asked. They hadn't had much luck heading downwards in this place and the thought of those chemicals, however inert they seemed right now, pouring in on top of them was not a pleasant one.

Sonic gave the hatch a kick.

"Unless you've got a better idea!"

He leapt down and there was a startled yelp and sound of a struggle. Tails and Knuckles gave each other an alarmed glance and dived in after him.

Sonic was standing gaping at them open mouthed when they landed.

"Eggman was right here!" Sonic waved at another hatch in the floor. "But he had another way out. Went off like a rocket. No following without getting toasted."

Tails was beaming. "You panicked him enough though. Literally _everything_ on here is still logged in, still open!

Tails jumped up onto a seat at the system, feet dangling almost his own height off the floor, his face full of fascinated delight.

"Oh this is _weird!_ "

His tone suggested this was a good thing and Knuckles frowned at Sonic who smiled and shrugged, and jumped up beside him.

"What's weird?"

Tails pointed.

"Blobby things," said Sonic. "Yep. That's weird."

Tails giggled. "They're not blobby things. They're… I'm not sure. They're just a visualisation of something else I think. Atoms or molecules or lattices or something. He's building something at a microscopic level, building something or growing something. And I can't work out if it's a chemical or a crystal. It's… weird. And it keeps changing."

"Whatever they picked up back on Knuckles' island was sort of crystally." Sonic leaned in curiously. Knuckles moved around to look at what they were both was staring at but had to conclude that Sonic's description of 'blobby things' was about all he could make if it.

"So you don't know what it is, or what it could do, or how it explains anything that's happened to us?" Knuckles asked.

Tails' ears lowered. "No. Sorry."

Sonic shrugged. "Was worth a try. Let's get out of here then."

Knuckles peered down the escape hatch Eggman had taken.

"Looks clear now."

Sonic jumped off the tall seat to join him, and Tails followed after a moment, with a reluctant glance back.

"These things move pretty fast," Sonic warned Knuckles.

"Good. The sooner we're out of this place the better."

Knuckles didn't wait for further comment, but leapt into the tube, closing his eyes as the systems caught him and whisked him along, fast enough to take his breath away once more.


	4. Studiopolis

They were fired out of the pipe with enough force to send all three of them tumbling into the air.

Tails and Knuckles caught themselves in the air and touched down lightly a second after Sonic who landed in a crouch and bounced back upright at once, already looking around and grinning broadly in realisation.

"Well this is more like it."

He clapped Tails on the shoulder, thought of doing the same to Knuckles, then thought better of it.

Tails beamed up at him, breathless and bedraggled but eyes sparkling as he stared eagerly around at the tall buildings and colourful lights, his ears flicking with interest at the noises from all around. Traffic and music and bells and gaming machines and voices and laughter and shouting and babble from the screen and speakers all around. Knuckles was also staring about them although the look on his face was only slightly less dismayed that it had been in Chemical Plant.

"What's _happening_?" he asked. "Where's Eggman, what's he doing?"

Sonic looked about.

"I can't see him," he shrugged. "We'll find him though. No problem."

"But..." Knuckles had his hands halfway to his head when Sonic looked back. "The noise..."

"Just the big city, buddy. No huge robot fight on offer yet. Sorry." Sonic hesitated, certain the answer to his next words would be brushed off but unable to not check. "Are you...um… You sure you're feeling okay?"

He'd been prepared for another dismissive answer. He had _not_ been prepared for Knuckles to leap towards him, right up in his face.

"Idiot hedgehog! Of course I'm not ' _feeling okay_ '. What possible detail about this is ' _okay'_? I'm stranded down here, Eggman is chaosknowswhere doing chaosknowswhat _with_ chaosknowswhat that I failed to stop him stealing from my Island, and everywhere we go is worse than the last place and my head hurts and it's _too loud..._ "

The furious volume in Knuckles' voice died between the start and the end of the sentence and Sonic, who'd thrown up his arms to deflect a blow ended up catching Knuckles' shoulders in support instead.

"Okay, buddy, okay. I mean, not okay, obviously. But y'know. Take it easy. We'll fix it. Let's just take a minute. I mean, that headache? That might not be the noise – you took quite a hit before this even really kicked off and we've done nothing but get in fights since and no one's eaten and you haven't slept." Sonic spoke fast, trying to get all his arguments out in one breath before Knuckles could object.

"We don't have _time_ ," he protested, predictably.

"Yeah we do," Sonic said. "It was you who said we needed a plan before rushing off in Chem Plant wasn't it? So let's go make one. Over lunch."

Tails looked around at the orange horizon. "Supper I think."

"Whatever."

Knuckles pulled his shoulders free of the hedgehog's grip and turned away.

"I don't need you telling me what to- Why is your face on that signpost?"

Sonic ducked round to look and grinned.

"Because I'm just that cool? World famous hedgehog y'know. Let's see if we can get a feed off the back of it? We've got a choice of..." He surveyed the names on the nearest buildings. "Club Spin, or The Pink Bot. Weird name pick. Easy choice then."

Before Knuckles could object, Sonic had one arm and Tails the opposite hand and they were all marching in to Club Spin.

Sonic was poised for protest but the muted light and abrupt reduction in the noise levels seemed to persuade Knuckles against arguing. The early evening must be a slow time because they were the only customers and the both the mouse and tortoise behind the bar looked stunned at the sight of them.

Or maybe just at _them_ specifically, because the mouse's eyes had gone wide and he was staring. The tortoise had withdrawn her head halfway into her shell.

"S-sonic?"

"The hedgehog," Sonic finished cheerfully, but the mouse was already shaking his head frantically.

"You can't be here!"

Sonic frowned, puzzled.

"It's not safe! Why would you…? You can't..."

"Sonic, what's going on?" Tails sounded anxious now too and Sonic put his hand on the fox's shoulder. "I'm not sure. We'll sort it."

He turned his attention back to the mouse.

"What's going on? You got some _other_ blue hedgehog on the sign outside?"

"No, but… We didn't think… It was just a… I mean – haven't you _seen?"_

The mouse scrabbled around the side of the bar and pulled at Sonic's arm. Sonic let himself be drawn over to the window in the opposite side of the bar to where they'd entered and looked out of the window the mouse was gesturing at.

A dazzling electronic billboard dominated the view and Eggman's face dominated the billboard. It flashed for a moment then was replaced by Sonic's: "WANTED" splashed across it in big letters.

"Ah," said Sonic.

"World famous?" Knuckles asked dryly, pushing Sonic's spines aside and leaning over his shoulder to look.

"Eggman's in control here?" Sonic looked back at the mouse, and the tortoise who'd followed them over to the window. "But… your sign? 'Club Spin'? "

The mouse shrugged. "No one thought you'd show _up_ – it was just… I don't know. It's a thing people do here now. Trying to look tough and cool. Like they're not afraid." He looked down. "When they are."

Sonic smiled. "It's okay. Look – we don't want to put anyone else in the firing line. We'll clear out. We'll fix it."

The mouse glanced up at Sonic, then across at the tortoise who gave him a tiny nod.

"No," said the mouse. "It's okay. We'll help. You must have come in because you wanted something right?"

Sonic shrugged. "Only dinner."

The mouse smiled. "We can manage that. But… uh…" He glanced nervously at the door. "Maybe a back room?"

Sonic hesitated, but one look at the others decided him. Tails, in spite of his alert interest in their surroundings, was glassy-eyed and his fur matted with sweat and grime. Knuckles looked as though there was nothing more than nerves and stubbornness keeping him on his feet. Sonic's stomach was protesting more loudly than any real bodily tiredness but even so...

"Yeah," he said. "Thanks."

The mouse stuck out his hand. "Lew," he said. "That's Cara."

The tortoise raised her hand in greeting. "I'm the chef round here. I'll get right on it."

Cara headed back behind the bar and from there through a door presumably leading to a kitchen. Lew led the other three past the window and through another door marked, 'Staff' which turned out to be a cluttered room of stored food, slightly damaged furniture and stacks of old newspapers. He pulled a table and chair from among the least damaged.

"Have a seat," he advised.

Tails plonked himself down at once, folding his tails up over his lap. Knuckles looked for a moment as though he was going to argue against the whole idea but instead sighed and subsided onto a second chair. Sonic leaned against the back of a third.

"So what happened here?"

Lew scratched behind his large ears. "I'm honestly… not sure. It happened so fast. Days. Less than that maybe. It was confusing. There was something weird about it. How fast it was, how many people went along with it. You wouldn't be safe if you went out there now Sonic, not from the _people_ let alone the robots."

Tails drummed his fingers on the table. "Something weird," he repeated. "Weird like that jewel? Weird like whatever he was making in Chemical Plant?"

Sonic stretched, leaning on the chair. "Weird like something other than giant conquering robots, you mean."

Tails nodded.

Lew pulled a paper from the top of the nearest pile.

"I kept them to try and make sense of it. Things don't… join up… quite."

He handed a few out. "One day it's the usual stuff and then, it's all 'Eggman in charge for our own good'"

Sonic frowned. "Own good from what?"

"You. Rogue robots with some chaos-emerald-type-thing you stole for them."

Sonic's spikes bristled in instant indignation.

" _I_ stole?!"

Tails folded back the pages to display a picture. "These are the robots we saw before right? In Green Hill after the jewel-thing did whatever it did."

Sonic and Knuckles looked and nodded.

"Yes," said Knuckles. "So that bit of it might be true."

Sonic tapped his foot, thinking it over. "He didn't seem happy with them," he allowed. "But he saw an opportunity to turn it his way anyway."

The door swung open and everyone not already standing jumped to their feet, only to see Cara enter with a huge tray of food and drinks.

"Chilli-dogs!" Sonic enthused, finally dropping into a seat.

Cara smiled. "Fast food a speciality," she said and tapped her fingers against her shell. "Not original I know..."

Sonic grinned. "Works for me." He tucked in at once, watching Tails grab one to each hand, and Knuckles cautiously sniff at another before biting in.

Sonic swallowed around an enormous bite. "So these robots, they're here too?"

Lew and Cara nodded.

"Yeah," Cara said. "Done a lot of damage. Scared a lot of people."

"And when-" Knuckles broke off, coughing and gasping and staggering to his feet. He stared at Lew and Cara accusingly and backed away. "Sonic… Don't… there's something in the food..." He coughed, eyes watering and then leapt forward to dash Tails' remaining chilli-dog from his hand and make a swipe for Sonic's.

Sonic whipped it out of the way. Torn between sympathy and laughter, he replaced it on his plate.

"You, um… You've never tasted chilli before have you?"

Tails reached for a cola and handed it to Knuckles. "Have a drink. I promise you haven't been poisoned."

Knuckles gulped the drink, sneezed violently and coughed most of it onto the floor.

Sonic winced. "No to fizzy drinks too, huh? Okay."

Cara disappeared past them and returned with a glass of milk. "Try that."

Knuckles eyed her suspiciously until Tails reached out and took a sip before handing it back.

"It's okay, see?"

Knuckles sipped it more warily than he had the cola and then in larger gulps.

"Why would you eat that? It _burns_!"

Sonic shrugged. "Gives it a kick." He bit back into his own 'dog to distract himself from Knuckles dismayed expression. The only thing keeping him from laughter was the fact that Knuckles' very first reaction upon genuinely believing he'd been poisoned, had been to try and warn them.

"Sorry," he said after a moment, once he was confident of not giggling. "I should have thought."

"Is that a thing you ever do?" Knuckles asked crossly, embarrassment having apparently replaced alarm.

"I'll find something a little less… hot," Cara said. "Why don't you come with me and show me what you might like?"

Knuckles followed her, casting a suspicious glance at Sonic over his shoulder.

Sonic watched him go and them dropped his head into his hands, losing the battle against laughter.

"It's not funny, Sonic!" Tails admonished him. "Poor Knuckles."

Sonic scrubbed his hands across his eyes and composed himself.

"So what have we got?" he asked as the echidna returned, now carrying a platter of what Sonic considered far too much greenery. "Eggman has the media zones under his thumb. Here and Press Garden, and has got at least some of the folks convinced that I'm the one running amok here and that he's keenly trying to contain these robots, right?"

"Yeah," said Lew. "Something about an experiment he was doing, intending to turn his inventions to the good of all, you're supposed to have interrupted and these mad robots are a side effect."

Sonic snorted. "And people buy that?"

Lew shrugged.

"It can't just be that," Sonic insisted. "Not just newspaper and TV. You can't make someone believe all this rubbish about Eggman being on their side and me the bad guy just by _saying so_!"

Sonic only realised quite how absolute a judgement that must have sounded when Knuckles' head came up and round whiplash fast. In spite of the speed of the reaction his eyes were slow to meet Sonic's and the expression in them when they did made Sonic want to look away.

"I mean..." he tried to pull back on the words, because Knuckles looked as though Sonic had pronounced sentence of death on him for kicking flickies. "I mean I _didn't_ mean..."

Knuckles sighed and picked up the piece of fruit he'd dropped and bit into it half-heartedly.

"It doesn't matter, Sonic."

Sonic stared at him. Knuckles didn't look back, slumped in his seat and picking at his food.

Sonic scooted his seat closer.

"Knuckles. It matters. Why people do things matters. If their intentions are good or bad or if they've just been conned. It matters."

Knuckles glanced up. "Not as much as _what_ they do." He returned his eyes to his food. "Or fail to do."

Sonic kicked his feet on the floor to bump his chair right up against Knuckles' and barged the echidna's shoulder with his own.

"Well then it matters that I've just rammed my sneaker in my mouth and made you think that something that's Eggman's fault is yours, doesn't it? Even though I didn't mean to. Even though I don't think so." He nudged Knuckles against, half-encouraging, half-provoking and surprised he hadn't already been swatted away. "Come ooonnnnn, don't tell me you're going to miss the chance to tell me I ran my mouth before my brain?"

There was a long pause.

"Again."

"Huh?" said Sonic.

"Again," Knuckles repeated. "You ran your mouth before your brain, _again_."

Sonic whooped. " _That's_ the kind of witty repartee I'm here for!"

Knuckles shook his head, and stared back at his plate. After a moment he spoke again and his voice was quieter although less outright miserable.

"You can get people to believe anything if they don't know any better. If they haven't got any way of checking or comparing. No way of telling truth from malice. You can lie all you like and be believed."

The light filtering through the windows from the screens outside turned the room alternately lurid pink and electric blue and made the shadows leap and twist.

"He's got a point," said Cara after a moment. "This is a TV town, Sonic. You, Eggman, Chaos Emeralds, all of it, it was just stuff we'd seen on a screen or read in the paper. It wasn't real. It didn't reach anyone's actual life in a way that you could make a decision about."

"Not an informed one," Lew added.

Sonic nodded, and didn't correct their assumption that it was the locals Knuckles was talking about.

"Yeah, okay. So leaving aside the PR fire and Eggman's lies for five minutes, what else have we got? This 'thing' I'm supposed to have stolen? Any info on that? Does anyone know where these robots are?"

Lew opened his mouth but before he could speak there was a distant boom of an explosion and the wail of sirens.

"Uh… there…?"

Sonic was already on his feet and not surprised in the slightest to find Tails and Knuckles up too.

"I'm guessing it's big-robo-fight time after all then?" Tails was grinning at him, already sticking a hand out for a tow. A heartbeat later, Knuckles extended his own.

"Well, hedgehog?" he asked. "Are we going?"

Sonic grinned. "We are!"

He gripped both wrists, felt Tails' small fingers grab tightly, and Knuckles' fist close careful but unshakeable, and then he peeled off out into the street. The stacks of newsprint whirled into the air behind him.

It wasn't hard to follow the sounds, in spite of the din of the city itself and the myriad distractions presented by the gaming and gambling machines, bars and lights, and things to do and win and race and risk. Under other circumstances Sonic could have lost hours to the place, but instead he dodged over and around and up and past. Stealing little shortcuts through structures that were never meant to be traversed on foot, grabbing extra momentum from the slipstream of the trams and vehicles that criss-crossed the city in every direction.

Before long their gaining on the 'bots was confirmed by the people fleeing in the opposite direction. Mostly anyway.

"Why don't they run?" Knuckles shouted into the wind of their speed. "What's he done to them?"

Sonic glanced at those people not running. Those standing to one side or the other. They were taking photos, filming, pointing and recording. He pulled a face. Explaining _that_ tendency to Knuckles right at this moment was going to be an utter non-starter.

"Never mind!" he shouted back instead, pointing over the crowd's head. "That's what we're after."

Above and ahead of them the robots were clustered around a TV camera-ship they seemed to have hijacked. Sonic ran towards it, considering the height and felt Tails' other hand close on his wrist.

"Sonic, d'you need me to-" Tails questions was cut off by a bang as a cluster of rockets streaked from the helicopter. Sonic cleared them in a wild bound, dragging the others with him and mentally correcting his assessment to 'hijacked and armed'.

He glanced over his shoulder but the helicopter and its attendant bots were already coming after them and firing a second volley. He put on speed. If he could keep the rockets aimed at them perhaps he could reduce the damage to the city and the self-preservation-lacking observers.

Without warning, Sonic felt Knuckles let go of his wrist. Before he could protest, Knuckles had shot up into the air, trading airspeed for altitude and slammed into one of the rockets. Sonic started in horror, for once too late to react, and waiting for the explosion that would blow Knuckles to pieces.

It never came. For a split second Knuckles was wrapped bodily around the rocket, dangling clutched tightly to itself underside with all four limbs. Then he flung his weight violently to the side, dragging the nose of the thing up and around and releasing it aimed back at the helicopter itself.

"Ha!" Sonic whooped as the missile impacted. Some of the momentum had been lost because the camera-ship merely staggered in the air and spewed smoke rather than disintegrating, but it was a start. Releasing Tails, Sonic leapt at a second missile, timing and aiming his jump not to try and simply smash it but targeting the control surfaces. He hit it accurately enough to grin and whoop once again as it pitched up and landed a second blow.

Tails had landed on all fours but sprang instantly back into motion, tackling one of the watching passers-by clear of the third missile.

Sonic ricocheted off the elevator of another rocket, watched Knuckles simply cuff another one off course and back in the direction he wanted it to go, and almost laughed at the sight of Tails now actively chasing off a gaggle of pedestrians twice his age who'd still not got the message. An exploding fragment of helicopter sliced into the spot where they'd been a moment before and Tails' outrage, even inaudible over the noise, was perfectly clear.

The locals fled.

The robots were also fleeing – away into the sky where they couldn't follow, to Sonic's infuriation – but the helicopter was coming apart entirely now. He caught Knuckles' arm to pull him out of the crash trajectory. He felt the echidna's muscles bunch under his hand but he didn't pull away and after a moment's assessment he relaxed and nodded in acknowledgement.

They stood watching the wreckage and the retreating robots as Tails rejoined them.

"We didn't catch them." Knuckles' shoulders slumped.

"Bet we made them think twice about coming back though!" Sonic said.

"And people here saw you fight them," said Tails. "Too close up!" he added with a fierce little frown. "They'll know you weren't the bad guy."

"Eggman's still here," Knuckles said. "We have to find him." He looked around the damaged but still flashing screens. "Where does all this come from?"

Sonic shrugged. "There'll be a studio somewhere. We can-"

He stopped. One of the screens was flashing red with 'Breaking News' and 'Live' scrolling across the bottom.

"Never mind… He's coming. Or… er… going."

Tails and Knuckles followed his gaze. Tails spotted it first.

"That… that's only back there..."

Knuckles looked back the way they'd come and back at the screen. A huge flying machine filled most of the view, but there was no question that the location was only a street or two back the way they'd come. Or of _what_ was coming.

As if in confirmation the roar of engines filled the air.

Sonic stared. "We _wrecked_ that Flying Fortress. We totalled it. How can he have rebuilt it so quickly?"

"I don't care," Knuckles cut across him. "It flies. It can get me- It can get us back to the Island. We have to get on board. We have to capture it, not destroy it."

There was no time to decide – it was on them. Sonic nodded. Other decisions could be made en route.

"Then let's go!"

They ran.


	5. Flying Battery

For a scant few yards Knuckles was ahead of Sonic, fury and desperation accelerating him towards the Flying Fortress. Then Sonic was past him, already leaping into the air and snatching a grip on one of the many protrusions from the enormous, airborne structure. Tails half jumped, half flew to grab on even higher and Knuckles jumped after them both.

As his hands closed firmly on the rungs of some sort of crawlway it was immediately apparent that the others were in difficulty. Knuckles' own hands were wrapped right around the rung and he was secure in his grip but the metal was slick with machine oil and grime and Sonic's hands were sliding. The hedgehog kicked his feet, seeking purchase on anything he could get a sneaker to but his attention wasn't on his own predicament, it was on Tails. Knuckles followed his gaze. The fox had managed to get a whole arm around the rail he was clinging to but the slipstream was battering him against the body of the craft, making him yelp in distress and squeeze his eyes shut.

Knuckles glanced back at Sonic.

"Help him!" Sonic gasped. Knuckles hesitated. Sonic was far less secure in his grip and in any case he had no idea _how_ to help. He had let them follow him into this mistake without any thought beyond getting on board and now they were going to fall or get smashed to bits and that was going to be his fault too and..

He looked about frantically. There had to be a way in. A hatch or a _something._

There wasn't.

His jaw tightened.

Then he'd make one.

For a moment he wondered if he would even be able to hold on with just one hand while he smashed his way in, but then Sonic grunted as his hand slipped further and Tails yelled and Knuckles let go.

For a split second he was dangling by one hand, flailing in the slipstream as Tails was, and then he'd hauled himself closer and swung with the opposite fist, ripping two long tears into the metal. He grabbed at the torn section and heaved, peeling it open like a piece of fruit.

"That'll work," said Sonic. "Get Tails."

Knuckles glanced up. Tails was still hugging the railing, eyes squeezed shut and legs drawn up in a protective huddle against the violent wind. He was safe, if uncomfortable.

"You first," Knuckles said, to Sonic. He reached out to pull the hedgehog up.

For a moment Sonic hesitated, and Knuckles could tell if it was reluctance to be helped first, or doubt about Knuckles' ability to hold him, or simple uncertainty over how to let go and transfer his grip to Knuckles without falling. And then the ship entered the clouds and the turbulence was the last straw to his precarious hold and he was hurtling past Knuckles.

Knuckles lashed out his arm and grabbed Sonic's wrist in the single moment of opportunity, suddenly grateful for those running tows he'd been so wary of, because they meant that Sonic at least knew how to hang on without making things worse.

The added weight and drag of the hedgehog, in addition to the icy damp of the clouds that made condensation spring to every cold metal surface was threatening Knuckles' own hold now. They needed to hurry this up. He pulled himself close to the ship once again, arms and shoulders protesting at taking all the effort on one side.

Sonic saw what he intended and struggled to reach the same rail as Knuckles, with his free hand. Something struck Knuckles hard in the back as the hedgehog squirmed. A knee or a foot, whichever it was it made him grunt loudly enough for Sonic to notice.

"Oops. Ouch. Sorry!"

"Don't be sorry. Be done. Move faster." Knuckles snapped. "Get inside. Now."

Sonic practically climbed up and over him and disappeared into the improvised hatch.

"What ab-"

"I've got Tails," Knuckles cut him off, already moving, dragging himself hand over hand to Tails' perch.

He positioned himself forward from the fox, further into the direction of flight, breaking some of the wind beating at the cub.

"Tails."

Tails opened his eyes and stared at him.

"You've got to hang onto me instead and I'll get us inside."

To Knuckles' surprised admiration Tails never hesitated. When Knuckles let go with one hand, Tails grabbed it firmly then immediately let go with the other and wrapped both arms and legs around the echidna.

Knuckles moved cautiously back to the tear in the ship where Sonic was waiting, braced against the wind and reaching out. Tails leaped for him and they tumbled inside and away from the edge. Knuckles hung gasping a moment longer then clambered inside to join them.

"I'm sorry," he said as soon as he could draw a full breath through the subsiding adrenaline. "This was my fault. I didn't think about how we'd get in. I shouldn't have assumed you'd come. I should have thought about what would happen if you did."

Sonic shrugged.

"We're here. It's fine. We were always coming. I didn't think about it either."

Knuckles stared at him, almost unable to believe it could be that simple a thing to dismiss. He'd nearly got them killed.

"It's not on you, Knux."

Knuckles blinked, his processing of the cause of the mistake abruptly derailed.

"Why do you do that?"

Sonic frowned. "Do what? Tell you that stuff that's not your fault isn't your fault? That's called: Not. Being. A. Jerk." He grinned "Is the concept new?"

Knuckles ignored the smirk.

"Not that. ' _Knux'_ "

"Oh." Sonic laughed. "Does it bother you? You should have said." Sonic's eyes glittered. "I'd know when to do it then."

Knuckles was too baffled to even rise to the taunt. "Bother me?" He shook his head uncertainly. "No? It's just… I don't know."

"It's a friendly thing, Knuckles," Tails said. "Really."

Knuckles caught himself about to ask why, but stopped. This was not the moment and he was distracted and had lost sight of the problem at hand _again_.

"Fine," he said. "Can we work on the fact that we're at least ten thousand feet up, and still climbing? We have a finite amount of time here before the air gets thin."

"Good point" Sonic allowed, casting a glance about. "This way?"

Knuckles and Tails followed him. Tails put a hand to the hatchway Sonic had found.

"This isn't a pressure door." A worried look crossed his face. "We need to find one though. What if it's all robots here and Eggman only keeps his section with any air?"

Sonic patted his shoulder. "Then we'll move fast enough to find that section!"

Knuckles swallowed against the pressure change in his ears. "Then we need to move _now_."

He heaved the door open, finding a vertical shaft ahead. A tiny ladder scaled one wall but the route was clearly intended for gravity-defying robots, not people. They scrambled up it anyway but when Knuckles opened a corresponding hatch at the top the wind nearly took his breath away as he found himself halfway outside again.

He ducked back down.

"What?" Sonic demanded from near his ankles.

"It's back outside this way. There're railings but..."

"Not sure we've got a lot of choice here," Sonic pointed out.

"Can you see another way in?" Tails asked? "Or a pressure door? It'll be heavier, sealed at the edges maybe."

Knuckles stuck his head back out. It was terribly exposed. A metal grid framed a sort of deck with girders and trusses turning it an obstacle course. Machinery moved back and forth along other rails, heavy and oblivious to the slipstream.

Maybe a hundred paces away the bulk of the ship rose again, and there _was_ a door, though he'd no way to identify whether or not it met Tails' criteria.

He ducked back inside.

"There's _a_ door..."

Sonic shrugged as best he could while hanging on to the ladder. "We'll take our chances."

Knuckles nodded tightly – what alternative was there after all – and climbed the rest of the way out. The slipstream snatched him off his feet at once and he grabbed the opened hatch, almost pulling it closed again on Sonic's face. Only the hedgehog's reflexes saved him, and it clanged shut over an indignant protest from Tails and a "Whoops!" from Sonic who was crouched on hands and knees, head lowered into the wind.

Knuckles flattened his spines against his head as best he could, crawled back to his knees, dug his claws into the gridded deck and let go of the hatch for Tails to climb out. Sonic grabbed the fox as he emerged and stood up, head still ducked, leaning into the wind.

He reached out his other arm for Knuckles who frowned doubtfully.

"Bit of a breeze," Sonic grinned back. "Not faster than me though."

Knuckles considered the physics briefly and concluded uncertainly that it was probably correct. He reached up and grabbed the hedgehog's wrist yet again.

Sonic ran, feet skidding on the slick metal, the wind pushing him backwards at least a step for every two he took but reached the door in seconds even so. Tails quickly identified the correct release mechanism and Knuckles frowned to discover it unlocked – how confident was Eggman to leave it that way?

"Eggy must _want_ visitors after all." Sonic smirked and heaved the door open.

There was a moment of dumbfounded shock before every robot that had been behind it opened fire.

The three animals scattered as though a bomb had gone off at their feet – Tails vertically upwards, Sonic breaking left and Knuckles to the right.

"Or not..." Sonic shouted sounding positively gleeful at this development. Knuckles wanted to snarl something back, some comment on the utter inappropriateness of his timing perhaps, but had enough to deal with battling both wind and robots alike. Laser fire crackled past his face and as he threw himself clear, the wind snatched him away from the cover he'd been aiming for, dragged him across the grating underfoot and flung him into the air again. He grabbed the nearest handhold and looked up, both feet kicking in mid-air and eyes streaming tears from the wind. Sonic was a blur, ricocheting from one to the other to _another_ of the robots. Tails was piggyback atop one of the larger ones, ripping out wires and redirecting the thing's weapon against more of the same type.

Knuckles ducked his head, looking back towards his feet – what would have been behind him if he wasn't dangling almost horizontally, and was instead _down_. He was going to have to let go and needed to know what he was going to hit if he failed to get back on his feet.

A movement caught his attention and one of the unidentifiable little machines passed on a rail a few lengths back. He tracked it with his eyes. Perhaps that would do. A ride back into the fight.

He let go, twisted towards the machine and missed by inches, once again underestimating the wind. Distantly he heard Tails scream a warning, but his hands had already closed on the rail and his whole body lit up in pain. Every muscle contracted at once and he couldn't tell if he was screaming, couldn't tell if he was breathing. He knew he had to let go but he couldn't make his body obey him and at least one of the robots must have noticed his helplessness because something hit him hard enough to knock the breath out of him and he was free of the rail but slammed back against a girder. Breathless and shaking, he closed his eyes against the black stars bursting across his vision. Something was hauling at him he thought. Or the sensation was just the protest of over-wrought nerves and over-exerted muscles.

There was an abrupt silence and stillness, which lasted a bare second.

"Knuckles!"

A hand touched his throat, and in spite of everything, that was enough to drive his eyes open and send him jerking and scrambling blindly to get clear.

"Hey, hey, it's okay, it's okay, easy. Only me."

Knuckles forced his eyes open. They were inside again. The quietness was merely the absence of the howling wind. Sonic was on his knees at his side, both hands raised, still talking.

"You're okay. I think. I hope. Your pulse is all over the place. _Are_ you okay?"

Knuckles considered the question.

"Knux?"

Knuckles frowned, not even close to completing the mental tally of exactly what had happened before Sonic had spoken again. He felt shaky and sore and there was a burning, growing ache across his torso which he couldn't account for. His hand strayed to it.

"Sonic spin-dashed you to knock you loose," Tails said. "We couldn't just pull you off because of the electricity and you didn't seem like you could let go. There wasn't time to think of anything else."

The fox's voice sounded odd to Knuckles. The same odd urgency he'd heard in Sonic's a moment ago.

He blinked, trying to assemble the new information and apply it to what he remembered. He was interrupted again before he'd finished.

"You grabbed the live rail that was powering the cargo bots," Tails said.

"Live rail..." Knuckles started but stopped because of how faint his own voice sounded to him.

"It was carrying electricity?" Tails apparently felt more explanation was wanted. "To power the bots?"

A shudder ran through Knuckles from top to tail. He closed his eyes but in the darkness behind his eyelids waited the memory of the last time he'd had such a shock – clinging to the Master Emerald as Eggman's machine tore it away, loss, cold metal and the savage, heat-less burn of the electrical attack.

He reached out by reflex to the Emerald, suddenly fearful of discovering a repeat of that awful separation. The contact flooded over him and sheer relief would have knocked him flat on his back if he he hadn't already been there. The contact was warm. Soothing. Healing. So why was he still trembling?

"Knuckles? Open your eyes. Stay with us here, okay?" Sonic's voice was too loud but his hand as it landed on Knuckles' arm was also warm. "C'mon. Sit up. Get it together. You're okay."

Knuckles opened his eyes at entirely the wrong moment, the world tilting wildly as Sonic pulled him halfway to upright. He slumped against the hedgehog's side, too dizzy to struggle against the embarrassment of it. Sonic's arm around his shoulders was warm as well. His grip solid. A firm and steady contrast to the slowly subsiding shivers.

"You gotta stop getting yourself shocked, buddy," Sonic said. "Your spines will end up looking more like mine."

Knuckles pushed himself to a more dignified sitting position. Sonic didn't withdraw the supporting arm and Knuckles didn't try to make him.

"That would be terrible," he managed to say.

Sonic grinned. "Right. No one else has a _chance_ of carrying off this a look this cool."

"Are you really all right, Knuckles?" Tails asked.

Knuckles considered it again.

"Yes." He drifted his attention to the flow of energy from the Master Emerald, and then appraisingly, to his own state. He _was_ okay. He'd reached out to check on the Emerald's state but that worked both ways of course. Any injury was already healed, but the contact had also warned him that they were moving every further away from the Island.

"Need a minute?" Sonic asked.

"No." Knuckles slipped out of the hedgehog's grip and stood up. He rolled his shoulders and shook out his spines and stretched.

"Sure? Sonic asked. "That was quite a zap."

"I'm sure."

Sonic gave him a slightly puzzled look but didn't argue. Knuckles looked around, assessing their location properly for the first time. Tails had apparently satisfied himself that Knuckles needed no further help and was also looking around.

"These are very new repairs," he said, pointing. "This whole section, look. But Sonic was right – it's way too soon and fast."

Knuckles looked but without much interest.

"It's not repairing it I'm interested in. It flies right now. That's all that matters."

He stepped over a pile of broken robot parts.

Tails poked the debris with a toe.

"No repairing those," Sonic smirked.

"He's probably built more," Tails didn't seem worried by the fact, Knuckles noticed, only curious. He'd located the next door and gave it a tap.

"Sealed compartments. In case one gets blown out, I guess."

Knuckles tried the door. "Not locked."

Tails nodded. "He's not worried about visitors – Sonic had that right too."

"Two for two," Sonic grinned and joined them. "So which way for controls, do we think, Tails? Front and centre up top?"

Tails nodded. "Probably."

Somewhat to Knuckles' relief there wasn't much scope for Sonic's headlong runs here, though they found themselves needing his speed more than once when their route forced them back out into the wind. The weather was worsening and the wind turned the rain into something that felt more like hail when it hammered against them.

It was a relief to be back inside and they finally seemed to have reached a more open interior although it was still littered with the remains of smashed robots. They accelerated and Sonic cast a glance back over his shoulder to check they were staying with him as he led the way through a headlong, erratic path. At some point Knuckles realised he was relying, at least in part, on Sonic's reflexes to not run them straight into one of the too-frequent sheer drops where the reconstruction work had apparently not been completed. He baulked at the thought, missed a step and had to jump and scramble to stay on his feet.

Tails threw him a concerned look but fortunately Sonic did not look back or appear to have noticed. Knuckles returned his eyes to the hedgehog's back as their feet clattered over the bare metal of a steep walkway.

Knuckles opened his mouth to protest that this was taking them _down_ , not _up_ but bit off the words unsaid as Sonic skidded to a halt, all his attention taken by the need to stop and stay on his feet rather than in an undignified pile-up.

The reason Sonic had stopped was clear immediately.

"Eggman!" Knuckles half started forward but caught himself in time and settled for curling his fists at his side. Between them and the scientist was a flickering, crackling wall of orange-red light, which Knuckles didn't need either Sonic's experience or Tails' expertise to recognise as dangerous to the touch.

Behind it Eggman's attention was on a screen in front of a wall full of robots designs and notes. He barely glanced up at them, his face a picture of amused unconcern and tapped a button.

Behind them, blocking their retreat, another light barrier flashed into being. Sonic's eyes darted about the room and then he assumed a pose of calculated nonchalance.

"So," he said. "What's up? New toys? Let's see them then."

Eggman's smile broadened unpleasantly.

"No."

He pressed another button and Knuckles felt something shift under his feet a split second before he was falling. Broken bots hit him in the air as they fell around him, and he smacked hard into a rail which he almost managed to grab before tumbling again, to land asprawl on a pit or tattered metal and loose parts. Sharp edges dug in everywhere he was in contact with the debris and he struggled painfully back to his feet in time to see Sonic touch down, dangling by one wrist from Tails' grip.

All three of them looked up in time to see a set of hatches swing shut and an unidentifiable mechanism slide out along the rail Knuckles had nearly broken his ribs against. The device threw off electric blue sparks every few seconds and Knuckles watched it warily, edging away to keep from becoming caught underneath it. Sonic also eyed it, but made a leap for it anyway although he fell well short. Tails took to the air and hovered just out of range, peering at it.

He fell back startled, as it lit up with an audible crackle, and landed back on his feet just in time to be thrown off them by a collection of robots pieces soaring into the air towards the device.

Sharp pincers snatched the pieces out of the air and, moving like lightning, reassembled them into something that hurtled straight at the three of them as soon as it was released.

Sonic yelped, but still leapt _towards_ instead of away from the new robot, smashing it easily. Two more were already airborne however and the machine was still turning out more. Knuckles knocked down the next one that came at him and looked around trying to keep eyes on all of the other at once. There was something unnerving about them, regardless of how easily they fell. Something eerie about how damaged they already were while still attacking.

"Zombie robots," Sonic called out cheerfully.

Tails made a face as he bounded past and leapt back into the air to deliver a determined kick to one arm of the device assembling them.

"They're creepy!"

A grinding sound drowned out Sonic's answer, and Knuckles realised with alarm that it was coming from behind the walls, which were slowly moving inwards.

Knuckles ducked a robot but had to sacrifice swinging back at it in favour of scrambling to keep his feet on the shifting pile of broken parts being forced inwards and upwards by the moving walls.

Sonic jumped on to of the growing pile of debris and landed his first blow against the actual mechanism.

"Always an upside!" he grinned and smashed into it again.

Tails laughed and landed in a tangle with a bot he'd just taken out in the air. The walls moved again and the debris shifted and the fox's laugh abruptly turned to a squeal of pain.

"Tails!" Sonic was at his side instantly. Knuckles glanced over, while still trying not to lose track of the unending stream of hastily built attackers. Tails' foot had become jammed somewhere in the pile of debris as it shifted. Sonic was pulling at his arm but to little avail.

Knuckles shoved Sonic's shoulder.

"Keep them off." He pointed vaguely. "I can get Tails out."

Sonic hesitated but nodded and took up station beside them, intercepting anything that got close.

Knuckles dug into the pile with both hands, trying not to think too hard about the odds of slicing his hands to pieces on the broken edges. Or about what they may have done to Tails' foot and ankle.

It only took a few seconds before he found the wedged piece and tore it in two in lieu of bothering to work out how to get it loose. Tails scrambled free and Knuckles pulled him the rest of the way clear.

"Injured?" Knuckles asked shortly, eyes already back on the airborne robots.

Tails rotated his ankle. "Nope. Just scratched up. Thanks."

Knuckles nodded absently and leapt back to the attack, only realising that Tails had grabbed him for a lift, when his jump took him considerably higher than he'd expected. He swallowed his surprise and struck the device with both fists. The momentum sent him almost into the rail above and he landed, staggering, to find Tails staring at him looking almost as startled as Knuckles felt at the unexpected effectiveness of the move.

There was a screeching of metal as the device came to a stuttering stop on its rail and a sudden silence as the walls also came to a halt.

"Okay," Sonic said after a second. "Now how do we-"

And then they were falling again.

Knuckles fought again to get clear enough of the debris around him to glide, but hadn't managed it before something hit him. Hit him and held him. Bots fell around him and there was daylight again and a wildly exposed view downwards but he wasn't falling, which would have been great were it not for the crushing pressure around his chest of whatever was keeping him from falling.

"Uh, Knuckles?" Sonic's voice made him twist to look for it and the hedgehog passed him, dangling confidently from Tail's grip. "Um. Hold on. I mean… well just..."

"Don't say 'hang in there', Sonic," Tails said.

Knuckles frowned, unable to make sense of the humour in their voices when the situation was so clearly unfunny.

He looked up. The device that had grabbed him was hanging from the underside of the ship, running, like the device they'd just destroyed, along a rail there. A protruding loading dock passed below him and before he could decide what to do about his predicament the device had let go.

He dropped, caught himself, and kept his feet on landing. The device accelerated back the way it had come before he'd decided whether it was worth the risk of attacking it.

Tails and Sonic landed beside him.

"Come on," Sonic said at once. "Eggman might be up on a higher deck, but it was this direction he was going."

Knuckles nodded and the three of them resumed their hair-raising transit across the exposed walk-ways and in and out of the cargo areas of the ship. The rain had stopped but the exposed areas of wet metal were treacherous underfoot. Eventually their way was blocked by another vertical shaft, this one lacking even the token effort of a ladder.

Knuckles slammed a fist into it once to see if it was climbable, then a second time in frustration at the fact that the first blow had left no trace other than two small divots.

Sonic put a hand on his shoulder and it took every iota of Knuckles' self-control not to land the third blow on the hedgehog's jaw.

"It's okay," Sonic said, apparently oblivious to his narrow escape. "We'll find another way."

Knuckles squeezed his eyes shut, fighting weariness and frustration and an uneasy, gnawing restless sense that in spite of their headlong speed and constant movement they were making no progress. Managing his own reactions to his un-chosen allies as well was a challenge he could have willingly done without.

He sighed and resisted the remaining urge to strike Sonic's hand away. Instead he simply walked out from under it, back the way they'd come.

He'd only gone three paces, with both Sonic and Tails back at his side when a crash from behind them made all three spin round. Knuckles raised his fists as Sonic dropped into a racers crouch and Tails also ducked, ready to spring. But for a moment all three merely stared.

"Zombie robots, now giant spiders?" Sonic demanded, staring at the multi-limbed metallic creature lashing back and forth into front of them at the end of a huge cable. "He's really playing the creepy card heavily this time isn't he?"

Knuckles didn't answer, and although no one else spoke again, all three of them moved forward at once to the attack. This time Knuckles didn't need warning about the hazards of the leaping sparking electricity that arced between the spider-bot's jaws. He didn't falter when the walkway beneath their feet shifted and started to rise. He divided his attention between the attacking robot and Sonic and Tails, determined not to make any further mistakes in coordinating their attacks.

The robot made a grab for Sonic and caught only air as the hedgehog jumped aside. Metal claws clattered on the walkway before withdrawing and resorting to another electrical blast. Knuckles dodged it but was forced to close his eyes against the flash. He heard the crunch of a spin-dash against metal as Sonic, leapt in to attack in his place, but apparently with little effect since when Knuckles reopened his eye it was to find the thing plunging at him. He rolled to the side but metal jaws closed on his ankle, with enough force to whip him into the air and fling him across the shaft.

The world blurred but he struck a tangle of bodies and fur instead of the wall. Metal spikes rushed past and it took him a split second to realise that both Sonic and Tails had leapt to intercept his tumble towards them, and collided with each other as well as him in the process.

All three of them had gone done in a heap, but giddy adrenaline drove Knuckles back to his feet and he pulled both of the others up with one hand each.

"Thanks," he told the still slightly glassy-eyed pair.

Sonic blinked at him. "No problem."

Tails glanced back at the robot, withdrawing up its cable once again, planning the next move perhaps. "That was one of the plans on the wall, y'know. It's brand new. It's not quite right yet. It's not very accurate."

"Are they ever?" Sonic smirked.

Tails grinned. His eyes went to another set of spikes as they rushed past. "I think we can make it even _less_ accurate..."

"Oh yeah," Sonic grinned. "Betcha Knuckles has never played conkers. We should totally fix that."

Knuckles frowned but Tails was already explaining.

"When he swings for us, we're all going to go for him, right?"

Knuckles backed up for a better angle. "Okay."

Sonic and Tails joined him, choosing their spot.

"Into the spikes would be fav," Sonic said. "Wait for it..."

The spider swung at them the cable lashing then tightening as it did.

"Now!" bellowed Sonic. Knuckles was already moving, the timing was clearly right with or without the hedgehog's yell and all three blows landed, the ringing of the metal as they hit it almost deafening and the shrieking tearing crunch as the spider-bot impacted against the spikes was even louder.

Bits flew everywhere and the sounds of mechanical distress peaked and then cut off abruptly to be replaced by sparks and the smell of burning insulation.

"Whoo!" Sonic cheered.

Tails eyed the robot. "I don't like the noises that's making." he said. "I think we should… move back. Fast."

Sonic glanced up. "I can see the top."

Tails followed his gaze. "I can't carry you both."

Knuckles gave the robot another look. Smoke was pouring from it and increasing instead of reducing, but the cable was intact.

"Tails is right. Move. I can climb that." He pointed.

"Nice!" Sonic beamed at him then at Tails. "Outta here!"

Tails jumped into the air, snatching Sonic's proffered wrists and accelerated upwards. Knuckles jumped up over the tangled remains of the robot and grabbed the now limp cable, pulling himself up hand over hand and trying not to breathe the acrid smoke.

On the top deck they paused to re -confirm their direction but had barely started running again before an almighty explosion threw them all off their feet. Getting back up was harder than it should have been. The vibrations didn't seem to be dying away and the deck canted alarmingly sideways. A lightness in Knuckles stomach told him they were descending. Fast. Almost falling.

"Tails?" Sonic asked wide-eyed.

"Uh. I don't know. That bot was on the plans he had on the wall. It's new. But I don't know whey the bang would be _this_ big."

Knuckles looked between them, at a loss for event he right question to ask.

"It's damaged this ship?"

Tails nodded. "I… think so?"

Smoke rose from further aft than the site of their most recent fight.

"Whatever it damaged, it's spreading."

Sonic made a face. "Right. Abandon ship!"

Knuckles stared at him, feeling the frustration rise all over again.

"No..."

"Sorry, Knux," Sonic shrugged though his tone was less casual than his expression. "This thing's going _down_ not up, even if we could take control now."

Knuckles wanted to argue. Wanted to demand they try something, that Tails pull some of that technical gibberish out that would make this work after all, wanted to deny the evidence of his senses, wanted anything rather than to give up and return to the surface.

But when had _wanting_ ever been enough?

He sighed and followed Sonic aft, looking for a safe place to get clear. Bots were heading that way too, did they have enough sense to know when to leave a failing airship?

Apparently they did, because they were equipping themselves from a stash of wing-like contraptions stacked there, presumably for such a purpose.

Tails' eyes lit up. "Look at those! That'd be way easier than carrying you down, Sonic!" We should definitely pinch some!"

Sonic grinned back. "Robot hang-gliders for the hijacking. I am all over it."

One jury-rigged harness later, Tails was running along the wing as Sonic wrestled guided it along the deck and off into the air. Tails jumped after him, and Knuckles gave a last regretful glance at the disintegrating ship, the best hope he'd had of flying back to the Floating Island.

He turned away and jumped into the turbulent sky.


	6. Press Garden

The tall, stormy clouds around them rose from a solid undercast but there was no avoiding the descent through it. Sonic's glider plunged into the dark dampness flanked by Tails and Knuckles. Almost instantly the moisture froze on their fur and Sonic shivered once, convulsively before his attention was totally consumed by maintaining control of the glider. It was hard to keep a sense of up and down as the air currents alternatively slammed his chest hard against the control bar and then threatened to rip it away from him all together. He looked round for Tails in time to see him tumbled right over in the air, heard Knuckles shout something that was snatched away by the wind before the echidna himself disappeared in the all encompassing fog.

There was nothing he could do for either of them and the realisation was worse than the biting cold and snatched at his stomach more than the turbulence. Sonic gritted his teeth and heaved the control bar in tight, diving for the base of the cloud.

He burst out into clear air and a dull flat light, with the glider canted over in a turn he hadn't realised he was making. He tugged on the bar and forced the wing level, his arms protesting at the unaccustomed force needed. The sky around him was empty and his heart sank until movement caught the corner of his eye. A flash of orange fur against the overcast above him.

Tails.

And Sonic grinned for the kid's cleverness for Tails wasn't flying at all. He was skydiving. Arms and legs spread, letting gravity bring him down out of the unflyable conditions. As Sonic watched, the fox drew his limbs in and again span his tails up to speed and slowed in the air.

Seconds later Knuckles also plunged out of the cloud, tumbling and shaking his head violently, scattering chunks of ice from his quills before stabilising his glide. He circled a moment before diving to position himself just off Sonic's left wingtip.

They reached the ground, landing with various degrees of stumble. Knuckles caught the glider's wing as Sonic struggled out from underneath it, and cast it aside. Frost coated all of their fur, turning it white before their time but Sonic was too weary and cold to even summon a joke about how ridiculously ancient it made then look. The wind was still biting and even Tails with his thicker fur was shivering.

"We need shelter," Knuckles said. "Or a fire."

"Or both." Tails' teeth were chattering.

Knuckles nodded and pointed. "There's buildings over there."

Sonic glanced over.

"Ruins, Knux. There's _ruins_ over there."

Knuckles shrugged. "You want to stand here and debate it or you want to get out of the wind."

A few snowflakes spiralled past in the icy wind and Sonic grimaced. "Okay. We try your ruins I guess."

The ruins were more massive, and more intact up close than they'd looked from afar. Weathered green marble dominated the facade, broken up here and there with creamy pillars, carvings and huge arched windows, some still retaining cloudy glass panes. Climbing plants in vivid purple twined into the cracks and here and there had pulled down the facing, exposing lighter stone beneath.

"Do you know this place?" Knuckles asked.

Sonic shook his head. "Not exactly here, no. We didn't come that far east east on that ship so we're near Press Garden I think but the place looks abandoned. No tourists gonna come ogle even really big ruins in this weather, I guess."

Tails' ears twitched. "It's not abandoned..." He frowned in concentration. "I can hear noises."

"Good." Sonic said. "Nice little hot snack stand, map seller, some snow-globe shaker of the place to buy…"

"Which way?" Knuckles asked Tails, giving no indication he'd even heard Sonic's input..

"Not sure. Echoes are odd here. From inside I think."

Knuckles headed towards the nearest archway with Tails following and Sonic shrugged and went after them. If nothing else it would be out of the biting wind.

The inside was not what he'd expected.

"Yeah, so – not abandoned then?"

"Not a tourist site either," Tails added.

Inside the shell of the building crates and machine parts were stacked almost as high as the walls themselves. The formed corridors and roofless rooms of their own, turning the interior into a maze.

The noises Tails had heard from outside were audible to everyone now, and they were mechanical as well. A distant metallic chattering.

"That's… odd," Tails frowned.

Sonic nodded. "Not exactly your typical industrial building is it? Something's up."

"You think Eggman's been here." Knuckles frowned, trailing a hand along the lichened wall. "That he's invaded this place?"

Sonic shrugged. "Maybe. Let's see."

Without warning Knuckles swung a spiked fist into one of the crates, puncturing then tearing upwards and open. Splinters flew and Sonic ducked, lifting his head in time to see Knuckles lifting out, of all things, stacks of newsprint.

Tails plucked the topmost one off the pile and handed the second one to Sonic.

"Oh. That's..."

"Not my good side?" Sonic asked.

"More propaganda," Tails said, reading the headline before making a face and discarding it. "Same stuff as in Studiopolis. You're to blame for it, blah blah blah. They're calling the gem-thing a 'phantom ruby'."

Sonic made a face, making no move to read his own paper. "Well that's nice and ominous. And what am I supposed to be doing with it exactly?"

"Does it matter?" Knuckles cut across them both. "If Eggman's here we need to stop him. If this is where he's churning out lies we need to stop _that_. We need to move."

Sonic dropped the paper back on the heap. "I can get behind that."

Tails skimmed the rest of the page. "Nothing helpful anyway."

They headed off through the labyrinth of corridors and balconies and crates. The clattering grew louder and soon they were running amid machinery as well.

"He's extended the presses out into the ruins," Sonic called. "Taking this PR business a bit far isn't he?"

Knuckles scowled. "It's a desecration. These buildings are ancient, they deserve more respect."

Sonic glanced back over his shoulder, surprised at the vehemence which Knuckles was currently taking out on a couple of lethal-looking robots which were very quickly reduced to scrap.

Sonic leapt at the three that moved to take their place, still talking.

"I wouldn't take it personally, Knux. It's his standard M.O."

Knuckles frown only deepened. "I know."

The next bot hit the opposite wall still intact but with enough force to scatter into bit at the impact.

Tails ducked the flying pieces and leapt up from his crouch to tackle another in mid air, sending it spinning into a pair of cogs which crunched to a splintering halt as most of a robot found itself lodged between the teeth of the coupling.

A horrific metallic grinding sound echoed through the building, loud enough to make Sonic and Tails flatten their ears and Knuckles clap his hands to his head. The abrupt stoppage had obviously had a knock-on effect and the shriek of stripping gears and engines crashing to a halt or abruptly over-speeding as connecting parts cracked away was deafening.

Tails' eyes were wide at the scale of the damage but Sonic lowered his hands from his ears and applauded.

He stopped at the drone of another approaching bot, louder now in the silence following the stilling of the press.

It raced into view and Sonic's spines stood on end at the sight.

"I think we ticked it off," Tails said faintly.

Knuckles raised his fists and Sonic could only conclude that it was sheer habit because landing on punch on this thing looked likely to result in lost limbs. It was less robot and more flying buzz-saw and before Sonic could get any further than that assessment one whirling blade shot out from the machine. It lashed out way further than he would have guessed and so fast he was almost surprised to find that reflex had carried him out of reach before any thought at all had kicked in.

"Keep your distance!"

He called the warning, and Tails shot roof-wards, but Knuckles was already moving in and Sonic had to fight the urge to close his eyes as the echidna jumped straight at the blade. He dodged it by inches, grabbed the arm carrying it, and yanked it down to the stone. Sparks flew and the kickback from the impact as the blade smashed to a stop, sent the machine flying in one direction and Knuckles in the other. He reeled back to his feet as the machine drew back taking aim with the other blade.

Panic leant even more speed than usual to Sonic's movement because Knuckles was dazed, not even looking in the right direction, and the blade was a whistling lethal blur. Sonic span up and into the back of the thing, before flinging himself behind a crate of machine parts as the undamaged blade lashed out again, targeting him this time. It hit more metal instead and there was another shriek of tearing metal and parts and shards flew in all directions.

The robot wobbled in the air, and the arm holding the blade trembled for all the world like someone who'd had a nasty sting off a bat in a ball game and Tails dropped bodily on top of it from his hover sending it pancaking to the floor.

Sonic hurdled the crate he'd taken cover behind and reached the robot a second before Knuckles, still blinking slightly dizzily, swung for it.

Pieces flew for the last time and for a moment they all stood there feeling just as giddy, staring at the wreckage.

"I feel like I should count if I've still got all my arms, legs and tails."

Sonic pulled Tails into a hug. "You're not wrong. You okay, Knux?"

Knuckles nodded slowly.

"Yes. But as far as shelter goes I think we need to look again."

Sonic laughed, relief making it louder than it would normally have been.

"Fair point. Let's get out of here. I think we've at least put a serious crimp in Eggman's marketing machine."

* * *

It was snowing heavily and Sonic hesitated at the doorway while Tails glanced at the clouds.

"That's going to get worse not better. Unless we want to dig in for a stay we need to go now."

"I agree," Knuckles said.

They ran until the underfoot conditions became too treacherous and then walked until Sonic began to wonder if they'd made a mistake in venturing out. Snow fell heavily and though the wind had dropped at last, that only meant the snow settled more quickly. Before too much longer they were wading instead of walking.

Knuckles pushed his way ahead, and Sonic swallowed his pride and let him. Tails alternated flying alongside, avoiding the problem completely or, when he tired, dropping down to walk at the back of the line where the snow was trudged flat.

Sonic's stomach grumbled and Tails laughed but then added. "Me too!"

Knuckles glanced over his shoulder and detoured from his straight line course to a low growing bare shrub when long red berries still grew. He swiped a hand up the branch, brushed thorns and the few dried-up purplish leaves from his glove and held the remaining berries out.

Sonic made a face. "You sure about these? Not exactly your normal stomping ground."

In answer, Knuckles palmed the whole handful into his mouth.

"So that'll be a yes?" Sonic picked warily between the thorns until he had a comparable handful.

Knuckles swallowed his mouthful. "If I gave you a list of identifying features would you know what to do with it?"

Sonic shrugged. "Probably not." He popped a berry in his mouth. "It's fine. I trust you."

Knuckles looked slightly taken aback and Sonic couldn't stop himself from answering it this time.

"C'mon, I can't expect you to have my back on the lethal robot fighting endeavours but then poison me can I?"

Knuckles shook his head, slowly. "I suppose not."

Sonic slapped him on the back. "Although to be fair, these taste absolutely rubbish."

Knuckles shrugged. "They're edible. I sincerely hope we're not going to be out here long enough to be tired of the taste."

Sonic grinned, even the handful of fairly indifferent food lifting his spirits. "We won't be. I can see a light – look."

In a brief pause in the snow a light was indeed visible in the distance a flickering orange glow. Sonic resumed high-stepping through the snow at Knuckles' side with Tails close on his heels as they headed towards it. By the time the reached the source of the light – an intricate stone and glass lantern as large as a brazier – another was visible beyond it.

"There's a road or something under here," Sonic said, holding his hands up to the glass for the hint of heat that made it through. "Roads lead somewhere. I say we follow it."

No one objected and they followed the line of lights.

Sonic had been bored of the pace some time ago and quickly tired of the novelty of spotting the next lamp along. He watched Knuckles for a few seconds as he detoured from the road to the berry shrubs once again. There was something habitual about it. Not something new. Something he was used to.

"So what're the winters like up with you?" Sonic asked to kill the time.

Knuckles shrugged. "Survivable. With care."

That sounded like a calculated understatement to Sonic and he would have said so but, but Knuckles was still talking.

"This isn't winter though. The berries are last year's, but the blossom on those trees isn't."

He bent down and swept his hand through the snow until he found the curb of the road. A ragged-leaved plant was growing there, green beneath the layer of snow.

"And this isn't."

Knuckles pulled a handful free and first tasted then ate it.

Tails looked curiously at them both. "A freak spring snow? Or something weird?"

"Something weird," Sonic guessed. "Could a chaos-" He stopped, remembering Knuckles' refusal to answer those kind of questions earlier.

"Chaos energy can affect the weather and climate, yes," Knuckles volunteered however.

Tails was frowning now. "And this 'phantom ruby'? Lew, back in Studiopolis, said the timing of things had been odd. And things had happened too fast."

"You think this ruby is a type of time stone?" Sonic frowned as well. One time travel runaround had been more than enough. "But Little Planet is gone. We stopped all that happening."

Tails shrugged and Knuckles looked between the two of them. Sonic expected questions but all Knuckles said was, "If there's any chance at all that Eggman has access to time travel then we have to stop him."

Sonic rolled his eyes. "What do you _think_ the plan has been all this time?"

Knuckles scowled at him but didn't answer. Instead he continued to tread down the snow along their route until further ruins came into sight. Sonic followed, scooping up a handful of the plant Knuckles had been eating out of curiosity. It was not what he'd expected after the berries. Instead it was crisp and peppery.

"This isn't bad!"

Knuckles glanced over his shoulder. "They say the flavour is stronger when it grows in harder ground."

"Mmhmm. Who's they?" Sonic asked with his mouth full. It was an idle, conversation making, almost flippant question but Knuckles' face grew tense again and he looked away.

"No one, I suppose. It's just a story."

Sonic caught him up and overtook to walk backwards in the snow. "I like a story."

Knuckles sighed. "I'm not a storyteller. It's just a teaching tale anyway, how to forage, a moral - 'hard times make strong people', a bit of Island history – how it ended up with none of the orchards or arable lands of the surface, just… that sort of thing."

"Kinda heavy for a bedtime story," Sonic couldn't help saying. "That what echidna parents tuck their kids into bed to?"

Knuckles' face darkened further. "I don't know." He hesitated before adding. "But it reads like a story for puggles, yes."

Sonic stopped long enough for Knuckles to walk straight past him and stared at the back of his head wondering how a simple story had gotten to him so much. Tails was quicker to work out the problem and elbowed his way between then to slip his hand into Knuckles'.

"No one read me stories either," he said. "Not 'til I met Sonic."

Sonic made a face behind both their backs, realising he'd put his foot in it once again.

"Sorry," he said. "What happened?"

Knuckles didn't look back. "I don't know," he repeated.

Sonic pushed his way back through the snow to walk beside Knuckles on the other side to Tails.

"That's rough."

Knuckles shrugged and something in the set of his expression told Sonic not to press for further details. In any case they were coming up on further ruins again and everyone's attention was soon on might might be within instead of the stilted conversation.

The ruins were were in a worse state, arches fallen here and there and ice coating every surface. A flash of metal caught Sonic's eye and he pointed at a device embedded in the wall.

"Eggman's been here." A faint mist rose from a nozzle and Sonic watched it, keeping warily out of range.

"What is it?" Knuckles eyed it.

"Let's not find out."

The next half-standing building they entered was even colder than outside and Sonic frowned. Blocks of ice were stacked here.

"There's rings in them." Tails pointed. "Weird."

Sonic gave a lone block a shove, sliding it across the slippery floor.

"I guess that's one way to move them without them going ping!" He leapt at the block, smashing it and feeling a surge of warmth as the rings within released their energy to him. He grinned. "Mine now!"

Tails grinned back and leapt at another block, collecting the rings within before joining Knuckles as he surveyed the room. More of the devices they'd seen outside lined the walls and Sonic was about to tell them to back off when the faint mist blossomed in an instant to a huge plume of icy fog.

Sonic was already moving and collided with both of them in a full body tackle that knocked the breath out of him and rattled every bone in his body. Cold so extreme it burned flared through every limb and he found himself entirely unable to take a second breath, unable to move, unable to so much as blink. The sheer burning cold was the only thing that existed. Blurry colours moved before his vision, but greyness crept in from the edges, unconsciousness threatening and the relentless cold was like being eaten alive.

Then came a smash which felt as though it might as well have been his actual skull and he was sprawled on the icy floor slabs. Air burned his throat as he gasped it down.

"Get more rings."

It was Knuckles' voice, Sonic belatedly realised. Knuckles' hands hauling him back up onto uncooperative, shaking legs and dragging him across the room. Pushing him towards another ice block and all but dropping him into the rings that cascaded free as Tails pounded on it.

Sonic gasped in mixed shock and relief and Knuckles pulled him back to his feet.

"Walk," Knuckles said and Tails tucked himself in under Sonic's shoulder on his other side.

The fox squeezed Sonic tightly, fading fear written all over his face. "You need to keep moving and keep warm. We've used all the rings here, we need to find more."

"Lucky there were any," Sonic managed.

"Lucky you were messing about with them before you got hit," Knuckles said. He shifted his arm where it looped around Sonic, supporting him as they staggered in search of more rings. "And Tails and I were lucky you saw that blast coming."

Sonic grinned through the shivers. "No problem. It's what we do."

Knuckles didn't answer but Sonic could almost hear him thinking that one through.

"Rings." Sonic pointed before the silence could get too long.

He collected them and the next set, and was walking then running under his own power before they got much further.

Which was just as well because before they _had_ gone very much further there was an almighty crash and something flew at them in a blur of motion.

All three of them flung themselves to the floor to avoid it and looked up together.

"It's one of those robots that got changed," Tails said.

Tails was right although it didn't move like a robot. Instead it sprang around them and flaunted what looked like a sword, almost as though it was inviting an attack. As though it was taunting them.

"Be careful," Knuckles said, but Sonic had seen it already – the weapon trailed the same freezing mist as the Eggman's devices.

"Let him try that in mid air!" Sonic jumped back to his feet as the robot leapt past them again spinning in the air itself and scattering throwing stars which made the other dive clear. Sonic hit the robot dead centre and it landed, reeling, the weapon loose at its side. Knuckles and Tails were on it in an instant, Knuckles swinging it for it with a fist while Tails yanked the weapon free and then turned it back against the bot. Ice formed almost instantly and there was a deafening noise of metal under pressure.

Sonic landed a second blow and parts scattered. The robot leapt over them once more but didn't return to the attack. Instead it fled. Moving nimbly and swiftly over the ice and snow.

Sonic clapped Tails on the back. "So are you some sort of fox ninja now? That was awesome!"

Tails grinned but Knuckles was frowning in the direction the robot had taken.

"Did you ever see a robot with a sense of self preservation before?"

Sonic made a face. "They are weird aren't they?"

He bounced on the spot, adrenaline have apparently finished the work the rings had started. "Are we moving on then?"

They headed for the nearest archway until Tails pulled them up short.

"Someone's here."

An electronic tone filled the air and peering around the archway Sonic recognised the rotund shape of Eggman. He was hurriedly entering something into a computer terminal which stood incongruous in the ruins. A holographic projection hovered above it and Sonic hissed through his teeth at the sight.

"That's Little Planet," Tails whispered urgently in his ear.

"Yeah," Sonic agreed, eyeing the rest of the projection. "And worse."

He raised his voice. "Hey, Eggy! Your cheap knock-off metal hedgehog didn't work any other time – don't you learn?"

Eggman half turned towards them, startled but not looking at all alarmed. He brought a hand down on the console and the world spun once again.


	7. Stardust Speedway

It was hard to identity just when the swirl of colours stopped. Sonic staggered, blinking and at first thinking the flickering quality of the light was part of the whole confusing transition. After a moment he recognised it for heat haze, even in the darkness. Heat haze and distant firelight and the dancing sparks of some sort of glowing insect away between the trees. They'd definitely moved. The freezing snow had been replaced by a muggy heat, melting the snow from his fur to drip into the mossy coating on the stones underfoot.

"That was your best plan?" Knuckles demanded angrily almost before Sonic had finished regaining his wits. "Just yell at him? And _now_ where are we?"

Sonic blinked and looked around more closely.

'Jungle' was the best he could come up with. The air was heavy with tropical scents and every direction was undergrowth, although clear paths, extensive stonework and large temple-like buildings were visible as well. There was something distantly familiar about it, but he couldn't quite bring it to mind.

"I'm not sure," he admitted.

"It looks like firelight from the buildings over there," Tails pointed out.

"So we go ask directions?" Sonic suggested.

"We don't have _time_ for that!" Knuckles sounded frustrated beyond measure. "Eggman-"

"Eggman sent us here," Sonic cut across him. "And by the looks of it, more to have us out of the way than because it's some grand trap – look at the place. We're in the middle of a jungle, there's no sign of Eggman. So the best we can do is find out way back and the best way to do that is with a bit of local know-how."

Knuckles frowned but nodded, apparently unable to find any argument against this logic.

They headed towards the lights. Tails was looking at the carving on the low kerbs that marked the edges of the path they were following. Elaborate geometric shapes inset with coloured and semi-precious stones drew the eye in spite of the vines that criss-crossed it here and there. The lights they were heading towards spilled out between tall fluted columns. Apart from the all encompassing greenery there was no particular sign of age about anything.

"Where do they still build like this?" Knuckles asked.

Sonic shrugged then spoke anyway. "It was Little Planet on Eggman's screen but..."

"But _what_ , Sonic?" Knuckles asked at once.

"But, this isn't what it looks like now," Sonic sighed.

Tails swooped low to duck an overhanging vine as they ran along the path. He glanced sideways at the others as he passed.

"Oh no. _Time travel_?"

Sonic looked up. Despite the 'oh no' Tails' eyes gleamed with curiosity.

Sonic tried to get his face to express that this was a serious situation, but Tails' poorly concealed enthusiasm for the idea scuppered his attempts.

Beside him, Knuckles had no such difficulty, and the dismay was audible in his voice.

"That's what this is." It wasn't a question. "We're so far away..." Knuckles voice trailed off and Sonic slowed and turned back to check because he sounded not just daunted by the prospect but outright appalled.

Appalled and not fully over the dizziness of the teleport maybe because he had his fingertips pressed to his temples as though shaking off a headache.

"You okay?" Sonic asked. Knuckles lowered his hands, though his eyes were still wide and shocked.

"We're so far away. I didn't realise. I thought it was the transition, or an injury, or..." He didn't finish. "We're _so_ far away."

Sonic blinked at him. "Uh yeah. You said. I know. You okay?"

"We need to go faster. We need a way back."

Sonic considered pointing out that he'd only slowed down because Knuckles had, but thought better of it.

"I'm all about 'faster!'"

He accelerated without further comment. Knuckles pounded along at his heels.

The lights were not as close as they'd first appeared – or rather they _were_ – if the distance had been a straight line. Instead, the ground plunged away into a steep-sided valley and back up again in a series of precipitous undulations before reaching the opposite side.

Knuckles accepted a tow after only a token protest and Tails whooped as they traversed the switchbacks, before coming to a screeching stop at the outermost edge of the light.

A tall pillared building that could have been anything from a public library to a pagan temple dominated the clearing, with smaller but equally elaborated-faced building around it.

In spite of the night time darkness there were lights everywhere, a flickering dancing array and there was chatter and music clearly audible. The reason became clear at once. The population of the place were fireflies. Or this planet's equivalent at any rate. A head shorter than Tails, but very clearly real people, as distinct from the tiny insects around them as they themselves were from dumb beasts.

Knuckles caught Sonic's arm as he made to move off towards them.

"We should… How do we know they're friendly?"

Sonic shrugged. "How do we know they're not?"

Knuckles stared at him, as though he thought he was being genuinely flippant, then looked back at the crowd. There were a handful of other types of people about. An owl was engaged in buying something from a street stand at the bottom of the steps to one of the larger buildings and a tree-frog was halfway up one of the columns, a shears in one hand and a swathe of trimmed plant-life in the other.

"It's a nocturnal village," Tails said, smiling.

Sonic nodded. "Hope no one's sleepy."

Tails grinned at him. Knuckles, on the other hand looked thoroughly weary but didn't comment and followed the two of them in amongst the villagers.

A market was underway in the square, wood and canvas stalls and stands backed up right against the more impressive architecture. Clothes, tools, house-goods and sticky snacks were on display in all directions.

There was no initial sign that Eggman had been anywhere near and Sonic cast about for someone not obviously already deep in conversation, hoping for someone to ask.

Before he'd decided, Tails pointed.

"They look worried about something."

Sonic followed where Tails pointed and nodded. Several fireflies were standing, off to the edge of the village, deep in conversation and their tone was markedly different than the relaxed shoppers. One was pointing, off back into the jungle. Another held a large, badly folded sheet of paper and referred to it often.

"Think they've got an Eggman shaped problem?" Sonic asked but didn't wait for an answer. "Shall we find out?"

He strolled over to the conversation.

"Hi, kinda new round here, but even so – is something up? We're kind of looking for trouble." He grinned. "In the nicest possible way, natch."

Two of the fireflies looked at the third who handed the paper over and took off to hover at eye level with Sonic.

He said something which Sonic couldn't make out.

"Uh, say again?"

This time the answer was longer, but just as incomprehensible and Sonic sighed.

"Oh yeah. Right. Different planet."

He glanced over his shoulder at the others. "Anyone speak, uh… Little-o-lian…?"

Tails' eyes widened in realisation while Knuckles' narrowed in concentration.

"Planet?" he said. Or at least Sonic thought he said, there was something odd about the _way_ Knuckles said it. The 't' eliding away almost to a 'd'.

The answer came back and Sonic barely caught 'planet' in the middle of it.

"Yeah," Tails said, dropped to his knees to sketch on the ground, scratching on stones again the cobble to make two chalky circles. One large one small. "Our planet. Your planet."

This time Sonic was listening for the recognisable word or any similar enough to grab at.

"Planet. When?" He blinked. "Hamster? Err. Hedgehog actually but."

Tails giggled and Knuckles scoffed in irritation as though Sonic were not taking this seriously.

"He's not talking about you, Sonic. 'Amser', I think. _Time_. 'Some. When. Time. Planet'?"

Sonic nodded vigorously. "Yeah, that's right. It's not always here." He pointed at the picture and mimed vanishing, spreading his hands wide and looking around in feigned surprise at their emptiness.

The firefly who lifted himself up to speak to Sonic now dropped to the ground and with quick fast strokes altered the larger circle, which Tails had intended to represent Mobius, scratching in what were unmistakeably two stalky legs, arms and a scowling face with an outrageous jagged moustache.

"Oh dear," Tails said.

Sonic scowled dramatically and stamped vigorously on the rough sketch. This met with general approval and the firefly holding the sheet of paper turned it around to show him a map, tapping on one corner of it then pointing at the sketch on the ground. A twisty network of paths that twined maze-like across the sheet. Other symbols also marked it but it as any one's guess what they meant.

"Eggman was here?" Sonic said, pointing from the sketch to the map. He got a head-shake in return and the firefly mimicked his own 'vanished' bit of pantomime before grabbing one of the others by the scruff of the neck and heaving him a few wingbeats through the air.

"He's been kidnapping the people here?" Tails said in dismay.

"At least one," Sonic said.

"We have to help!"

Sonic nodded and attempted to express that sentiment via play-acting and the few words their languages had in common. He thought he'd probably succeeded. At any rate the map was handed over, although the doubtful looks led him to believe that their attempt would probably be followed up, even it they didn't realise yet that they'd never _keep_ up.

"Any objection?" he asked. Knuckles shook his head and even held out his arm, hand open to grasp Sonic's wrist. Sonic grinned. "Then we're off!"

It didn't take long to realise how essential the map was. The maze-like paths had been no exaggeration and the frequent changes of direction had stopped being entertaining way before Sonic came to a longer halt.

Knuckles let go and rubbed his wrist idly, clearly not much enjoying the ride. Even so his first question was, "Why did we stop?"

Sonic stepped off the path, towards the glint of metal that had caught his eye.

Tails bounded over as well and rapped hard on the shiny sphere.

"Not exactly in keeping with the local style, is it?" Sonic said.

"Nuh-uh," Tails agreed. He frowned, ears lowering in concern. "You don't think there's anyone _in_ there do you?"

"One way to find out." Sonic looked over his shoulder. "Want to do the honours, Knux?"

Knuckles didn't comment, but did step forward, brushing Sonic aside and swinging for the sphere.

It came apart with a tearing of metal and a whoosh of pressurised air that made everyone jump back.

"No one," said Tails, in a tone halfway between relieved and disappointed. "Guess we keep look- Woah!"

Sonic had already started back to the path but spun round at Tails' yelp.

"What-"

From around the base of the sphere something from growing, lots of something and way, way faster than any natural plant. Sonic stared at them dumbfounded for enough seconds that he missed the fact that one was right beneath him until he found himself propelled upwards in the air, scooped up by a leaf the size of a raft. He sat down on his tail with a thump at the sudden acceleration from below.

"Sonic!" Tails yelled and flew up after him. Knuckles meanwhile was hurtling hand over hand up the stalk after them both and the whole situation was so bizarre that Sonic found himself laughing. At least until something enormous snapped at him. He rolled sideways and off the leaf at once, flinging himself over the edge and out of reach and in the next second Tails was beside him and pulling him safely away.

Knuckles, on the other hand, vaulted onto the leaf and faced off against what – to Sonic's further bemusement – looked like an oversized and heavily fanged flycatcher. There was damp crunch as a huge roundhouse blow hit home and sticky lumps of plant matter went whirling overhead.

"Ew." Sonic scrambled back up onto the chunky leaf which supported his weight along with Knuckles' easily.

"What is – was – that?" Tails asked.

Sonic shook his head. "I have got no idea."

"It's something of Eggman's – it came from that pod." Knuckles jumped from the leaf, gliding back tot he ground to examine the debris. Tails offered a hand to Sonic and hovered the two of them down to join him

"Not a bad trap really," Tails admitted. "I mean you see Eggman's stuff you smash it, right? Next you know you're up to your muzzle in-"

"-huge bitey plants," Sonic nodded vigorously.

Knuckles frowned. "So he _was_ here?"

"We're on the right lines," Sonic agreed. "We just need to- Can you hear that?"

A siren was wailing somewhere out of sight and all three heads turned towards it.

"Did we do that? Are these pod-things connected?" Sonic looked around. Half expecting cables or aerials to be more plainly visible.

"The people in the village weren't using electricity," Tails pointed out. Sonic nodded. The siren was clearly electronic in tone. "So it's more likely Eggman than not."

They ran, following the sound, though locating a route amid the twisting and frequently overgrown paths was tricky.

After long, frustrating minutes they found themselves outside another of the temple-like structures. Sonic didn't pause and no one protested as he dashed inside. Electric lighting in the interior turned the stained glass to an eerie yellow-green, obscuring whatever design had been there originally and the siren was ear-achingly loud in the confined space.

Tails had his ears pressed flat to his head but shouted over the din. Sonic shrugged, unable to make out a word when abruptly both the lights and the noise vanished.

Sonic huffed out a sigh. "Well that's a bit better. Hope no one's scared of the dark."

Even without being able to see them Sonic was _certain_ he could picture the outrage on both of the others' faces, but before he could tease any further the darkness was broken by a pair of dazzling pinpoints. Sonic squinted. A pair of robots circled just out of easy jumping range, in perfect formation to one another.

Sonic glanced instinctively in Tails' direction but the fox was as ready as ever, and Knuckles had raised both fists, all signs of weariness vanished at the prospect of a fight.

Sonic examined the bots more closely, frowning as he did so. They were clearly parodies of the fireflies themselves. Glowing at the base with a sharp, hard light that abruptly flared into a flickering beam of energy that looked halfway between fire and electricity. The beam leapt between the two robots and, with no haste at all, the pair advanced on them.

Sonic eyed the energy warily and caught Knuckles doing the same. Clearly he was in no mood for another zap.

"Split up," Sonic called. "I bet they can only keep that up with two of them."

There was no argument and they broke for the corners of the room, Sonic and Tails going one way and Knuckles the other. Sonic's legs twitched with the urge to leap at the things but the angle was wrong – attacking from underneath was going to lead to fried hedgehog.

Knuckles on the other hand _did_ dash underneath, hesitating there then dashing back out again, jumping occasionally although he did come close to reaching it even as the thing descended.

"He's luring it down," Tails said suddenly in Sonic's ear. "And over there. I can get you above it while it's distracted."

Sonic nodded. "Works for me."

The pair of robots surged away from then, following Knuckles instead as he rushed out from underneath it once again. Tails took off with a bound, catching Sonic's upheld arms in the same movement and flying hard for height.

"Go!" Sonic called and Tails swung in the air, launching him with enough momentum to turn into a spinning attack on the closest robot. It disintegrated so abruptly that Sonic had a split second to hope he was right about the beam needing two of the bots because if not he was going to hurtle straight through the debris and into it.

He resisted the urge to close his eyes, tumbled through empty air and hit the ground rolling and instantly back up on his feet in time to see Knuckles smash the second bot.

"Well that was eas-"

"Don't say it!" said Tails in the same second as the darkness was broken once again – seared away in fact by an almost comically huge version of the same robot. At least it _would_ have been comical were it not for the blindly bright and clearly lethal ray of energy which was charring the paving beneath it and the wild speed with which it moved.

Knuckles flung himself clear and Sonic leapt way higher than he'd known he could, propelled by sheer adrenaline. Tails, already in the air, dropped onto it, landing a blow which made it wobble in but did nothing for the burning beam below it, then shot upwards again while Knuckles dashed in perilously close, leaping up to clip the edge of the thing. The whole robot rocked to the side, the beam scything up the nearest wall as it swayed, and missing Knuckles by inches as he clung on and snatched his legs clear. Sonic leapt at it from the opposite direction sending it spinning once more while Knuckles whaled on it from his precarious perch on the side of what Sonic supposed must be called its head.

Tails hovered uncertainly above them, unable to find an opening that wouldn't make things worse and Sonic smashed into it once again, having to take it on faith that Knuckles would get himself clear if he had to.

The beam left burnt and blackened grooves in it wake but it was flickering now, sparking and shorting. Knuckles tore at the casing with his claws, heedless of the sparks that landed in his fur and Tails dived down to offer a lift which Knuckles ignored as Sonic came in for what far too much experience with bots told him would be the final blow.

It was, and the bang threw all of them once more to the far corners of the room.

Sonic leapt back to his feet shaking his quills.

"I am getting exceedingly tired of this," Knuckles remarked, picking fragments of metal and charred wiring out of his own spines.

Sonic opened his mouth to response but instead called out a warning as a flicker of movement caught the corner of his eye but cut it off as his brain processed what his eyes were seeing.

Two young fireflies were peering around the edge of the tall, arched doorway at the far end of the room. The language was still unclear to Sonic, but the wide eyed expression and was clear enough. Sonic smiled broadly and beckoned, dropping to one knee to look as unthreatening as possible.

It only partly worked. They came forward but as soon as they were clear of the doorway, launched into the air and out of the opposite window. Tails headed through the door they'd come out of.

"I think they were locked in here," he said. He made a face. There's… cages… pods… something. Electronic locks must have gone out when the power went. There's another way out back here too."

Sonic followed, Knuckles trailing warily behind, to find Tails back outside and examining a dilapidated metal device.

Sonic joined him and gave it a prod with a toe. He made a face.

"Hmm. That's not great. I was kinda hoping some of Eggman's gizmos would still be around to get us back… er… forward to the future."

Tails looked closer, pulling off panels and peering at circuitry.

"It's overgrown more than rusted. No power though. You really time travelled with this? What ran it? What was the power source?"

"Things like it yeah and I have no idea. That's Eggman's nonsense not mine. He's never tried them anywhere but here. Time travel, so time _stones_ I guess. I wasn't exactly sticking around to disassemble one."

Tails crouched down, digging deeper into the device's workings. "There's no place to fit anything like that. There's a… something… like a ground heat exchanger except… "

"It was pulling energy right out of this place?" Knuckles frowned at him. Sonic blinked at this sudden interest in the mechanics of the thing.

Tails scrunched up his face. "I can't see _how_. But even if is was, it isn't now. It's broken – right here."

He pointed at a tangled maze of what looked like piping, if piping had been made out of iridescent blown glass.

"Can you fix it?" Sonic asked. "Getting back home is kinda beside the point if we're a billion million years ago."

"We're not a billion million years ago," Tails said absently, without looking up. "Maybe a thousand. And I can't fix it without tools. Assuming I could work out the right tool for this."

Knuckles stared at the device.

"You said 'time stones' before, Sonic. Tell me."

Sonic shrugged and waved his hands vaguely, sketching a gemstone shape in the air. "You know chaos emeralds..."

It wasn't quite a question and Knuckles gave him a look which made Sonic glad of the fact because the answer of course was 'of course'.

"Well they look kinda like that. Except they-_"

"Alter time?" Knuckles asked, voice dripping sarcasm. "Tell me something I couldn't have guessed, hedgehog."

Sonic glared at him. "I don't _know_ anything else. Not really."

"They're from here? Where? Does someone guard them? Study them? Could someone help?" The questions came rapid fire and Sonic could still only shrug.

"Asking any of that is going to be tricky without a language in common," Tails said doubtfully. "I guess if it's the same energy and you had an actual stone you could maybe power the machine directly, rather than with whatever ambient energy this stuff was designed to gather."

Sonic glanced over his shoulder at the sound of movement further down the path. "Well here's our chance to try."

Half a dozen fireflies approach in a flurry of chatter, the two small one which had fled the commandeered temple amongst them.

An older member of the group theatrically threw his arms around the younger two then stretched them wide in the direction of the Mobian trio.

"I think that's probably a thank you." Tails suggested.

Sonic grinned broadly and stepped forward.

"Sure, hugs all round, go us!"

The chatter resumed but Sonic spoke up it. "Hey while we're all friends though -" He tugged the arm of the firefly who'd approached him, drawing him down to sketch once again on the ground.

He started with the pictures they already had kind of established. Big planet, little planet – then pointed to himself with a mock sad face and tapped on the bigger planet shape.

"We really need to get home," he added aloud, since it was clear there were at least some words making it across the language barrier.

He pointed at the machine and shrugged. Tails joined in the mime. He picked up a stick and snapped it and made a similar sad face. Sonic drew seven rough gem shapes on the ground and pointed behind them and the machine and shrugged again, hopefully, smiling and tapping on the 'big planet' circle. Over the top of this Tails outlined what they hoped to do.

Some understanding was clearly happening because the firefly frowned, pointed at the gemstone sketch and closed his hands one over the other, drawing his hands in close. Knuckles watched this byplay.

"They're not just going to hand them over on faith, Sonic," he said, but joined Sonic on the ground and pulled off one glove, the better to join in the finger drawing attempts.

Sonic sat back on his haunches as Knuckles outlined what was clearly meant to be the Master Emerald in swift stylised strokes, beneath the gems Sonic had drawn. He pointed at it and looked up at their audience.

"I know how important it must be to you to keep such things safe."

He pointed at the gemstones sketch lightly with one finger and used their word again. "Amser."

There were nods and Knuckles looked thoughtful, then touched the Master Emerald picture lightly and said another word. "Anhrefn?"

A murmured discussion took place among the fireflies and Knuckles knelt upright beside the drawing and raised his hands to place them over his heart, gloved hand atop the bare one.

"Ceidwad," he said. "I'm a guardian and I would never take something you guarded from you. But we need your help."

Sonic had no idea which words of either language were being fully understood but he found it impossible to believe anyone could doubt the sincerity in Knuckles' body language.

There was a long pause, eye contact between the fireflies and a tiny nod, one finger held up and then pointed at the machine, a conversation which Sonic caught none of and of which Knuckles and Tails only shrugged when he glanced in their direction.

"They'd hardly lead us to where they keep them," Knuckles said, settling off his knees to sit on the ground apparently unconcerned.

Sonic tapped a foot but after a moment sat down as well. Tails touched down to join them. The fireflies kept their distance, talking among themselves and casting over the occasion wary look.

"You think they understood?" Sonic asked. "That they believe us?"

Knuckles shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe they just want us gone and this is easiest."

"You don't think that!" Tails protested. "They seem nice."

Knuckles frowned but it looked to Sonic more like confusion than irritation. Like he didn't really see the relevance.

Sonic kicked his heels into the lead mould covering the paving slabs and cast about for something to pass the wait.

Tails spoke first.

"I wonder if their language is an ancestor of ours or if they have contact with Mobius already. There were words in common but most of it was different."

"And they knew some of Knuckles' words," Sonic added.

"Yeah," Tails said, "How far back do you know the Floating Island's history, Knuckles?"

"A long time," Knuckles said. "We don't know when we are though, not really. So it would be a guess. And they're old words, the words they knew. Time. Chaos. Guardian. They're in the oldest oldest stories."

"So it could be either way round," Tails concluded.

"He's back," Sonic bounced to his feet, ending the speculation. The approaching firefly cradled a secondary glow in his hands. Purple in contrast to his own yellow-green.

He pointed to the machine.

Sonic nodded. "I think I know how this works." He scuffed the path beside the device revealing a network of connections embedded into the stone and gleaming through the dirt. "They activate it and we run. Really run. _Fast_." He eyed the others. "Maybe with a run up."

He paced out a hundred yard start-line and beckoned the others over.

The firefly nodded, apparently satisfied with his understanding, and landed, uncurling his hands from around the time stone he held. He reached out, and touched the glittering gem directly to the broken network that Tails had been examining and a shimmering gleam spread over the whole device.

"How do we know when we're going with it?" Tails asked.

Sonic shrugged. "Guess we hope Eggman anchored it somewhere sensible to get _him_ back."

For a moment Sonic thought Knuckles would protest at the lack of certainty in that but he kept quiet.

"Ready?" Sonic asked. He got nods in return. "Let's go!"

And they ran, accelerating towards the machine, Sonic pacing all three against the speed he knew from experience would trigger the device correctly.

He threw a fleeting wave at the watching fireflies, and then they were through and past them and the air dissolved into glitter and a ringing eerie tone. He thought he was still running, though his stomach turned slow circles and his eyes no longer registered any sense of movement.

And then he definitely _was_ running again, his feet pounding on a metalled pavement and his eyes filled with traffic and music. The sky still sparkled, lit up with fireworks and the streets were crowded at ground level and above.

Sonic slowed and stopped to look around.

"Well it's definitely more like now," Tails said. "Those are electric loudspeakers for a start."

"Plenty of people to ask!" Sonic looked around but was interrupted by a bang which all three of them were familiar enough with trouble to recognise was _not_ a firework. The tone of the noisy crowd changed, more urgent and alarmed.

Tails shook his head, slightly rueful. "Just once, it would be nice to just sit and watch the fireworks..."

Sonic grinned. "Meh, there's always time for that – just not right now!" He held out a hand and Tails quickly shook off the moment.

They ran towards the source of the explosion, against the crowd which was either static in chattering curiosity or moving firmly in the opposite direction.

The crowd thinned as they went, until the only people they were passing were those actively trying to direct the crowd the other way. Sonic didn't linger long enough to answer questions and sooner they were also alone.

Only for a moment though before two hares came pelting past.

"Hey?" Sonic called, "What's up?"

Somewhere in age between Tails and Sonic the two hares hesitated, wide eyes before one of them shook her head wildly and pulled at her friends arm and they fled.

Sonic frowned.

"Maybe they didn't understand you," Tails suggested. "We're still on Little Planet."

"They were just scared," Knuckles said.

"Maybe." Sonic was still frowning. "But they looked _more_ scared at the sight of us."

Tails frowned now too.

"Of _you_ ," he said slowly.

Knuckles looked back and forth between the direction they were heading and the way the hares had fled.

"We know Eggman has been putting about that Sonic's the problem here."

Sonic shook his head. "I don't think _I'm_ the blue hedgehog-a-like they're worried about."

Tails' eyes widened in realisation. "Metal Sonic."

"The robot?" Knuckles looked back from his surveying of the scene. "It's _here_?"

Sonic grimaced. "I think maybe Eggman meant to send us straight into his lap – not into the past of this place. He had the planet and Metal right there on the screen."

"We're _now_ now though," Knuckles said.

Sonic tipped his head curiously and not only at the sentence structure. "You're sure? How do you know?"

Knuckles shrugged. "I just do. It feels different. A long way away but not the same kind of long way."

Tails opened his mouth, almost certainly for more details but Sonic jumped in first.

"I'll take your word for it. But we can't just leave Metal Sonic here. Not again."

"No way," Tails agreed.

Knuckles said nothing, which Sonic took as agreement.

They continued in the direction the hares had come from. They were on the outskirts of the city now, high rises and nightclubs giving way to industrial areas, deserted now in the darkness, machinery casting long shadows from the electric lights.

Sonic peered into the shadows, half expected the robotic hedgehog to be stood waiting in any patch of darkness they passed. Pilot-lights on machinery turned into glowing red eyes in his imagination as the sound of the city faded into the distance.

A metallic crash made Tails jump onto Sonic's foot in alarm and Knuckles spin round, fists raised, before it became apparent that it was only a fallen collection of parts that had caused the racket.

"What made them fall though?" Tails headed towards them, unafraid now the startle factor had passed.

Sonic smiled at his boldness but made sure he was right behind him nonetheless.

Knuckles stayed clear watching their escape routes and approaches instead.

"There's someone back here," Tails called. "Hey, it's okay."

There was a snuffling in response and a bear cub crept out of the clutter. He fell back on his haunches, wide eyed at the sight of Sonic who raised his arms and grinned.

"Real hedgehog," he said. "Blue, but real. Okay?"

It was unclear whether the cub understood or not but he didn't stay to talk. Like the hares he ran off without a word back towards the city.

From somewhere up ahead electronic laughter broke the silence.

"Oooh, does no one want to stay and listen to the meat and blood hedgehog's chattering? What a shame."

Sonic clenched his fists. The voice set his nerves on edge: a horrible combination of Eggman, and a twisted mockery of himself, all over-layed with that rotten metallic twang.

"Where is he?" Tails whispered urgently. "He can see us!"

Sonic shook out his quills which were standing up involuntarily.

"Come on out, you tin fake!"

Another grating electronic chuckle.

"Come and find me."

Sonic grinned through clenched teeth and held out both hands to Tails and Knuckles.

"Easy."

He felt both wrists taken firmly in the grip of the other two and launched himself into a run towards the voice.

And in fact it initially _did_ seem easy. They rounded a corner, Tails and Knuckles barely skimming the ground as Sonic raced along and there was the metal hedgehog simply standing there. Another terrified local squirmed in his grip, a firefly, fluttering and tugging to get away and getting nowhere.

Tails let go promptly and shifted his position in the air to catapult himself towards the metal hedgehog from above as Sonic came in from below. Knuckles caught his eye and adjusted his own line to leave space for Sonic's attack, circling wide to come in from the offside.

Except that Sonic's attack hit absolutely nothing. He sailed straight through the image of his metal doppelgänger and almost arrived face first into the wall behind him.

"What the..."

"Hologram," Tails interjected before Sonic could finish.

Metal Sonic laughed and disdainfully shoved the firefly away from him.

"You'll have to run faster and further than that!"

Knowing it would infuriate the machine Sonic grinned again and repeated, "Easy!"

Knuckles was already stalking ahead, looking for some clue as to the robot's direction but Tails had gone back to the projection and was rummaging around near it's feet.

"Not much of a comms antennae," he said after a moment, picking a device up and causing the projected robot to flip upside down and half disappear into the pavement. "He's close."

"So let's find it," Knuckles demanded.

"Across the street, an industrial warehouse or factory lit up, blue and orange neon light pouring out of the open doors.

"Well that looks like an invitation," Sonic smirked.

"It looks like a trap." Knuckles scowled in that direction.

Sonic shrugged. "Honestly, lately? Same thing. Are we _not_ going because it's a trap?"

Knuckles eyeballed the doorway. "No."

"Well then. Invitation!"

Tails laughed and Knuckles sighed.

"Fine. After you, hedgehog. It's _your_ lookalike."

They entered the building more warily and slowly than they'd arrived at it. It was poorly lit and though the machinery was still, the racket of badly maintained air-conditioning battling the tropical heat meant they had to shout to hear one another.

Sonic wondered if they should be worried about shouting, whether it gave away their position, but since they were knowingly marching straight into trouble he decided that any attempt at stealth was probably long past pointless.

Metal Sonic would be waiting for them. Sonic himself had no doubt of it. It was his style. Or Eggman's style presumably since he designed the thing.

As was, of course oversized Eggman's-look machinery – and since the next room they entered contained both robot and creepy Eggman-shaped-tech, Sonic gave it an unimpressed look.

"Oooold, scrap-spines. Old news…. Tell your boss to get some newer ideas."

Instead of an answer they got electric bolts – which sent everyone leaping clear and prompted Knuckles to yell at him.

"Is now the time for smart remarks?"

Sonic hit the floor in a spindash and tumbled back to his feet.

"Oh, it's _always_ the time for- ooph!"

Sonic found himself tumbling again and for a moment not even sure what had hit him.

"Uh, Sonic..." Tails called in an alarmed tone. "There's kinda a lot of them!"

Sonic accelerated into a spin, still unsure what he was hitting, and looked over his shoulder from the far side of the room to see Knuckles surrounded by undersized robot 'sonics'. It would have been funny if not for the seriousness of the situation and Sonic was halfway back towards him when Tails dived in and plucked Knuckles clear. The echidna lashed out as he dangled knocking away the literal hangers-on.

Above their heads the distorted laughter of Metal Sonic rang out. Tails and Knuckles landed beside Sonic and looked up.

"Why's he glowing pink?" Sonic asked. "That can't be good."

"The ruby?" Tails said, but didn't get a chance to speculate further as they were fully occupied between energy blasts and the mob of robots.

"We can't hold them here," Knuckles shouted.

Sonic thought about arguing but because it went against the grain to admit defeat but Knuckles had a point. The cramped quarters only favoured the robots. He glanced at the metal doors which had slammed in both directions of exit but Knuckles had not waited for his answer and had brute forced his way through the robots to tear at one of the doors, almost peeling it back more than opening it.

"That'll work," Sonic said. "Let's go!"

He felt, more than saw Tails fall in behind him, the familiar down-draft of his flight welcome reassurance that he was right there, right up with the plan and at least for the moment safe. Knuckles was already running, looking keenly from side to side, picking a route that favoured feet and real reactions and reflexes over programmed ones. A wild, obstacle course of trip hazards, scattered cover and rapid direction changes.

They'd shaken off the smaller robots and in the open the energy blasts were way less of threat. It was Metal Sonic himself who was still the danger. Fast and way more unpredictable than a robot ought to be, he pursued them, dived on them, circled around, guessed at their route and was sometimes even right. They landed the occasional shot but only seemed to amuse him.

"Enough!" he finally declared in an electric snarl. "This bores me."

The was a crash and from what seemed like nowhere a fifty foot high, spike-covered wall sprang up. For a moment there was a suggestion of the same glittery sick swirl of colours that had accompanied their rapid relocations, and then wall was simply there as though it always had been.

Tails blinked. "That was..."

"Weird. Yeah. Run!" Sonic snatched Tails' wrist and acted on his own instruction. Knuckles pounded along behind and Sonic had to trust for the moment that he was keeping up because the wall was _moving_ and Metal was diving at them, hoping no doubt to slow them enough to get caught, or even to drive them back towards it.

Knuckles yelled, a sharp breathless cut off sound and Sonic broke stride, heaving Tails skywards.

"Up!" he yelled and Tails didn't hesitate shooting skywards. Metal Sonic laughed and the wall in a flickering series of flashing lights grew taller still, as though actively chasing the fix. Sonic felt panic threaten – had he made a mistake? But Knuckles was staggering back to his feet after whatever had happened and was inches away from the spikes and Sonic doubled back and dragged him clear, way before the echidna had his feet under him. And then Tails was diving towards them, trading height for speed having failed to out-climb the wall and Sonic threw a glance back over his shoulder and swerved violently as Metal dived for them again.

Knuckles swung for him in passing, with his free hand and caught him a glancing blow which sent him cartwheeling. There was a flash and something glittered in the air. The ruby? Tails grabbed for it and missed and it bounced on the floor. All three of them as well as Metal Sonic dived for it and it was unclear quite whose hand touched first but in any case they were spinning again, tumbling through that lurid swirl of colours again. Falling.


	8. Hydrocity

The confusion cleared with such instant clarity that it was almost disorienting in itself and Knuckles knew in an instant exactly where he was, in spite of the fact he was still spinning, tumbling in all three axes. Still falling, slick blue-green bricks whipping past. Knuckles twisted to to get air under his spines, but had only gotten himself half way round when he saw what was beneath them and changed his plan from a glide to a dive into the deep water.

There was a tremendous splash and instantly his vision was obscured by bubbles as Sonic hit the water flat on his back a second behind him and Tails plunged in after them. Knuckles let himself drift for a moment waiting for the bubbles to clear, holding his breath, orienting himself. Tails must have also held his breath at the moment of impact and was swimming, pulling at Sonic, who had either gasped or yelled and was now thrashing wildly, choking, drowning.

Tails was heaving with all his might, but Knuckles knew the surface was too far away, even without the churning undertow. He swatted Tails off, gesturing sharply at himself then Sonic. Tails blinked at him, terrified, but let go. Knuckles dragged the hedgehog further down, easily overpowering his disoriented efforts to fight back, and hoping he didn't take it into his panicked head to spindash his way free. Instead, a flailing sneaker caught Knuckles in the stomach and he lost his grip for a moment, coughing bubbles into the water and fighting the urge to curse. He tried again, struggling to contain the hedgehog's increasingly wild contortions. Blue spikes swept dangerously near his face and he snatched at the only thing he could see which wasn't sharp – grabbing hold of Sonic's right ear.

Something crunched unpleasantly under his fingers and Sonic jack-knifed in the water, but pain from such an unexpected quarter seemed to have snapped him out of panic for at least a second or two and Knuckles seized the moment to shove him the rest of the way to the bottom and force his face hard against the emergency breather vent. He was afraid it would be difficult to make Sonic breathe from it in his confusion but he'd been gasping in water so wildly that he gasped in the air with equal panicked abandon.

Knuckles hauled him off it, clamped his hand around the hedgehog's muzzle and dragged his face round until Sonic's alarmed, blinking, eye-rolling gaze was at least vaguely looking at him and indicated as best he could by mime the importance of holding his breath.

Knuckles' own breath ached in his chest as he glanced over his shoulder. Tails had got the idea and dipped down to the breather. Perhaps he'd figured them out on their previous, uninvited visit. As Tails moved away, Knuckles let go of Sonic's muzzle and pushed the hedgehog's head back down into the bubble stream. One breath, two and he pulled him back up. Sonic kept his mouth tightly shut this time, and there was only fear in his eyes, no longer blind panic despite the fact he was shivering violently in Knuckles' grip.

Or maybe it was Knuckles himself trembling he realised, because he really, _really_ needed to breathe now. Would have needed to even without the exertion of dealing with Sonic. He was light-headed, the edges of his vision losing what little colour there was to be seen through the dark water. He shoved Sonic vaguely in Tails' direction and dived to his hands and knees over the breather vent. A gasp of a breath and then a second more controlled, deeper one and he floated aside for Tails, with his arm round Sonic, to go back in.

Knuckles tapped Tails on the shoulder as he pulled Sonic back upright. As they both looked wide eyed at him he tapped his chest – then pointed to a passageway above and to their right and back to the breather.

Hoping he'd conveyed the message that he knew a safe route, Knuckles pointed back to the breather again, tapped himself, then Tails, then Sonic. In that sequence Sonic would have had the most recent breath before they moved off.

Despite the breathers, Knuckles knew Sonic must have taken in a certain amount of water, and it was clearly costing him a lot of effort not to cough and make things worse. He set a fast pace, heading for next dry area he knew of, Tails on Sonic's other side matching him.

Navigating the tunnels and the currents was easy, almost without thought, and after less than a minute Knuckles pulled himself up out of the water and reached back for Sonic who was slumped on the top step with his knees still in the water and his upper half sprawled across the damp stone tiles, coughing and retching violently.

Tails was patting him hard on the back and Knuckles didn't really have any better ideas than that so he got to his feet and checked instead that they weren't about to be surrounded by invaders while they pulled themselves together. With his feet firmly planted back on the Island it was easy to shrug off the adrenaline weariness of the unexpected plunge and the scuffle with Sonic. Sheer relief washed out every other sensation and he leaned against the slick marble, hands pressed flat against it. He was home. Safe. And home was safe. The Master Emerald was safe. He closed his eyes and drew a long breath that felt like he'd been holding it for days.

Sonic, by contrast was breathing in sharp gasps and it was long minutes before he was able to climb the rest of the way out of the water. He made to sit down against the wall but Knuckles grabbed his arm to keep him on his feet.

"Gimme a break!" Sonic protested.

"No. Keep moving. There's rings along here, look."

Sonic looked up. "Yeah?"

Two clusters of rings later he was looking recovered enough to hesitate at the next set. "Tails? D'you need…"

Tails was already shaking his head.

"I'm good."

Sonic turned to Knuckles, looking him up and down, as if for the first time. "Well you definitely do, Knux - how did you get so scratched up?"

Knuckles looked down at himself. Sonic was right, his arms and chest were criss-crossed with shallow cuts, turning the water that still dripped from them pink.

"You weren't keen on my help and you're spikey," Knuckles summarised abruptly.

Sonic blinked at him. "Uh, yeah? Hedgehog? Wait. That was me?"

"Don't worry about it. Rings or not, that help's going to have left you a few bruises. We're probably pretty even."

Sonic rubbed the side of his face where Knuckles had rammed it against the vent and cautiously felt at his ear. "Yeah, fair enough. I won't take it personally if you don't."

Knuckles nodded minutely and stepped forward into the short line of rings in the passageway ahead, feeling the tingle as the little bursts of concentrated energy spread through him, chiming soothingly with the background chaos and the steady fortifying presence of the Master Emerald.

"So which way?" Sonic asked, interrupting this pleasant interlude. "Tell me you know a dry route."

Knuckles shrugged. ""This is Hydrocity. Very little of it is dry. How d'you feel about boats?"

Sonic made a face.

"On a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is 'dry land' and 1 is 'underwater? About a 2."

Tails smiled and Knuckles took this as agreement and lead off, relishing the chance to at last be back on his own ground, running a familiar route. In spite of his remark to Sonic, and a lingering surprise that, of all the things for the hedgehog to baulk at, he simply couldn't swim, Knuckles _did_ take them the driest route possible. An easy detour here and there to trigger sluices and pumps cost little enough time.

Some water though was, of course, unavoidable.

He glanced sideways at Sonic who was running steadily at his side.

"You like going fast, right?"

Sonic returned the look with an expression that indicated perfectly clearly that he considered the question a foolish one.

Knuckles cut sideways into a narrower tunnel, took three paces along it and then grabbed Sonic's hand and leapt into the air, as the tunnel gave out onto one of the flumes that criss-crossed the area. He twisted and landed on his back, pulling Sonic along with him so he could keep both their heads above water as they were swept along and round the watercourse.

Speed without effort.

Somewhere close behind Knuckles heard Tails splash into the water with them and a glance showed him right behind them, arms and legs wild, spinning on his backside in the current, completely out of control but laughing. The flume steepened abruptly and Sonic gave a yell which only had a slight hint of alarm left in it at the ride.

They shot out of the bottom of the flume so fast they skimmed the water below and fetched up amid the spray on a shallow slope of smooth stone.

Sonic staggered to his feet looking distinctly dazed and for a moment Knuckles wondered if he'd just started a fight by pulling such a stunt without warning, even though he suspected the look on Sonic's face pretty closely matched his own after that first tow.

Sonic shook his head ruefully and smiled.

"Well that was something! That what you do for kicks and giggles round here?"

Knuckles' _knew_ his expression was perfectly composed "Just a shortcut, as long as you know where they end up."

Sonic scoffed. "Yeah right, pretend that wasn't for fun, all you like!"

"I don't know what you're implying." Knuckles said, firmly, but some combination of amusement adrenaline and sheer relief at being back on the Island made it hard to keep a smile from his face.

"Come on, I know somewhere safe we can rest tonight."

"Rest? Pah. Rest is for wimps," Sonic grinned and Knuckles ignored it. No one had slept since Chemical Plant, or eaten since the city, and they were finally somewhere that Knuckles could be certain was absolutely safe, and he wasn't going to miss the opportunity to get his head down even for a short while.

He pushed himself upright from where he'd been leaning against the wall and led the way up a twisting flight of stairs. Halfway up at a spot which look no different to any other spot he touched a place on the wall. With a smooth slide, a section of stone moved back and aside. Knuckles ducked his head to enter, beckoning the others after him.

"Secret passage!" Tails said.

"Never not cool," Sonic grinned at the fox's excitement.

Knuckles straightened once inside and closed the hidden doorway behind them. He looked around habitually checking the state of the place. It was an emergency refuge spot primarily, insurance against a day the waters were higher than expected and blocked the routes out, or there was some other urgent reason to be somewhere more secure for a while.

Luminescent algae glowed from a shallow, pool, but Knuckles found the candles anyway. He pulled the waxed fabric off a variety of boxes and opened the double-wrapped matches to light the candles and a small firebox in the centre of the room.

From another box he took food, dried fruit, grains, tea, jam, cooking tools. He filled a pan from the fresh water flow in the opposite corner to the pool and set it over the fire. They'd have to share on utensils. Then he sat back on the cork matting that covered one half of the space.

Tails was dabbling his fingers in the algae pool in curiosity but Sonic had stayed to watch Knuckles' preparations. He hadn't argued further about resting a while but looked puzzled instead.

"We're stopping down here?"

"It's closest," Knuckles explained. Sonic frowned. The hedgehog must _really_ dislike the water.

"You don't want to get home now we're back here? This place isn't _that_ big is it? Can't take too long?"

Now it was Knuckles' turn to frown, wondering why Sonic assumed this place was any less 'home' than anywhere else on the Island.

"I mean, shouldn't you tell someone you're back? You just _vanished_ , someone must be worried." Sonic's expression changed briefly, and his voice lowered. "Sure, I know you said no family, right, but there's gotta be someone wondering where you're at. Even if it's only whoever gets sub-in shiny rock duty?"

Knuckles felt his jaw drop open and he stared at the hedgehog. He'd been sparing with details he knew, but _this_ sparing? Sparing enough that Sonic didn't know? Eggman had known, hadn't he? How had Sonic not known?

"Knuckles?" Sonic's face had fallen into what was now recognisable as concern. "What'd I say?"

Knuckles shook his head trying to process why the realisation had rattled him. "Nothing. It's..."

Eggman had known. Had known his solitude here made him vulnerable. Susceptible. Easy to manipulate. To lie to.

Sonic hadn't known?

It wasn't _dangerous_ for Sonic to know, Knuckles told himself, he'd thought Sonic already _had_ known, there was no reason for the confirmation of it to feel like some new threat. Sonic, and Tails, were allies, hadn't he had ample proof of that already? All three of them would have been dead within the past few days multiple times over if not for both the other two.

Except that all that had happened without Sonic _knowing_.

Would it be different if he did? If he knew there was no support, no back-up, no fall-back plan, no obstacle other than one tired echidna and a handful of automated, ancient defences, defending this place and the power it held?

No. Surely no.

But every instinct railed against the admission and every self-doubt planted by Eggman's deception joined in the protesting chorus.

"Knux? Hey, it's okay, buddy." Sonic still looked puzzled but he smiled and shrugged. "You wanna rest here, we'll rest here. It's no big deal. Just a thought. Doesn't have to be the decision of the century. Tomorrow's not going anywhere."

Knuckles forced himself to meet Sonic's eyes, searching for any hint of deception and not remotely sure he'd recognise it if he found it.

Sonic tipped his head to the side.

"Okay?"

Knuckles shook his head minutely, by reflex more than in answer.

"There's no one waiting." He forced the words out. "There's no one else, there's no one here."

Tails looked up, eyes wide, and Sonic looked equally startled.

"How do you kn- What? Has something happened? Why… Did-"

Knuckles shook his head more firmly, cutting off the hedgehog's confusion. "Nothing's happened. Nothing new. No one else lives here. There are no other Guardians."

Tails stood up from his crouch by the pool.

"Knuckles…" He was frowning even more than Sonic and his ears were lowered. "But… No one? On the surface… Some of the books say that echidnas… that there _are_ no more, that they're extinct. You… Are you saying, there's no one here _either_?"

Knuckles closed his eyes briefly. Part of him had already suspected as much – no one had ever come back after all – while another part occasionally wondered if there was some reason for that, that there was something that could be accounted for, that could change, that could make his solitary role explainable. That there was someone. Somewhere.

"There are no echidnas here. There's no one here. Only me."

"Knu-" Sonic started to speak but before he'd gotten more than one syllable out, Tails had launched himself from the pool and barrelled in at waist height, flinging his arms around Knuckles and knocking all the breath out of him. For a split section he thought he really _was_ being attacked. He shot to his feet, Tails still clinging to him, and then froze, completely unable to find an appropriate reaction, unsure what to do with his own hands, which he'd flung up by reflex and now held in mid-air, as though halfway to either surrender or attack.

"That's horrible!" Tails' said, without letting go or looking up. "I'm so sorry."

Sonic's hand landed on Knuckles' shoulder making him snap his attention round to the hedgehog, but, while the expression on Sonic's face was strange, there was no threat there.

Knuckles looked down at the top of Tails' head and warily lowered his hands to pat him on the back.

"That's… Okay?" he said, looking to Sonic for further help but only getting a headshake.

"We didn't know," Sonic said and patted Tails' back more vigorously. "Come on buddy, you've already frightened the life out of Knux here, you can let go now."

Knuckles opened his mouth in reflex protest at the slight on his courage, but decided it was disrespectful to the little fox's fighting spirit.

"I've seen this one take on robots ten times his size," he said instead. "I'm perfectly entitled to be startled if he leaps at me."

Tails looked up.

"I didn't _leap_ at you," he said, indignant despite what Knuckles had intended as a compliment.

"Kinda did..." Sonic said, but he was smiling. Tails released his grip and stood back. Sonic threw an arm around his shoulders and pulled him in for a moment before letting go as well. Tails leant in to the gesture without hesitation in spite of the teasing amusement in Sonic's tone.

Knuckles looked at the pair of them, feeling even more at a loss than he had a moment ago, and for lack of any better ideas returned to his position on the floor to attend to the fire and boiling water which by some miracle had not been overturned by the commotion.

After a moment Tails and Sonic joined him, watching as he poured half the water into the tea kettle then spooned dried grains and a handful of fruit into the remaining water before returning the pan to the fire.

"Are you hungry?" he asked, to break the silence that had descended.

"Yeah!" Tails said eagerly.

Sonic wrinkled his muzzle. "For porridge?" He waggled a hand "So so."

Knuckles wordlessly reached back into the supplies box and deposited a pot of honey in front of the hedgehog.

"Does that help?"

Sonic grinned. "You bet."

Eating was a somewhat awkward shared affair – Knuckles had equipped the place for one person, and they were going to empty what should have been a three day cache in one meal.

He couldn't quite bring himself to be concerned though. It was a relief to be on the Island. A relief to truly believe that Sonic and Tails were not going to about-face on him, even knowing the truth about his situation here.

Abruptly he found himself yawning.

Sonic tipped his head. "Do we need to set a watch?"

Knuckles shook his head and wondered at how easily the reaction came so soon after suspicion.

"No." He'd know if anyone else came here. And he was no longer afraid of what Sonic or Tails might do.

The proof of that came, even to himself, with how quickly and deeply he tumbled into sleep once they settled themselves down.

He drifted awake the following morning, with a clear sense of daylight, despite the underground location. Somewhere up above, the sun was warm and bright on the ground of the Island. He sat up and stretched. Sonic and Tails were both still asleep, the hedgehog flat on his belly with spines ruffled and askew from rolling over, and the fox curled in a ball with both tails wrapped around himself.

Knuckles stood and stretched and debated the safest way of waking them. Now he was rested he was keen to get back above ground, back to the Emerald, back to checking whether anything untoward had happened on the Island in his absence.

"Sonic!" he ended up calling loudly. "It's morning!"

The hedgehog gave a muffled, reluctant sound of acknowledgement and crawled to his knees, blinking sleepy disorientation from his eyes.

"'S still dark."

Knuckles relit a few more candles but shook his head. "Not outside."

Sonic opened his mouth, frowning but didn't actually get as far as a question before shrugging and turning to poke Tails in the ribs.

"Up and at 'em, kiddo!"

Tails' nose emerged from the bundle of fur that was the rest of him, and after a moment he sat up.

"It's morning?"

Knuckles nodded. Tails apparently accepted this at face value more easily than Sonic and only looked mournfully at the empty porridge pan.

Sonic got to his feet, following Tails' line of sight. "Uh, did we eat you out of house and home last night, Knux?"

Knuckles shrugged. "I can resupply. There's plenty stored and it's still growing season in most zones here anyway."

"Okay. Cool. So we going up top?"

Knuckles eyed the hedgehog as he bounced on his toes, no trace of sleepiness or recent awakening remaining. He glanced at Tails who shook himself and stood as well.

"I'm good to go," he smiled easily.

Knuckles led off without further comment, snuffing the candles as he went and leading the way through the twisting, canal-lined corridors to a tiny jetty where the stonework descended into the water once again. A sleek blue and gold boat rested low in the still water.

Sonic grimaced. "Oh. You meant it about boats?"

Knuckles gestured out across the water, where the water spread out from multiple channels into a wide underground canal basin.

"It's a choice of this then a long flight of stairs, or back the way we came underwater all the way then about 20 lockgates straight up. If you don't like the water this is the better route."

Sonic scowled at the boat a moment longer, then stepped to the edge to look down into the clear water before stepping back hurriedly.

Looking had been a mistake, Knuckles thought but didn't remark. This was the deepest open expanse in the city. Light spilled down from the sun tunnels directing daylight from the surface to be scattered by prismed windows and glitter from mirrored decoration. Rays of light shone through the crystal clear water to fade to deep blue than black as the depth increased. It was beautiful but if one didn't like water then the view was unlikely to have been reassuring.

Nevertheless Sonic reached for the high prow of the boat to steady himself and stepped aboard. The fox jumped on to join him, softening his landing with a flick of his tails so that the boat barely rocked. Knuckles unlooped the painters from the jetty and gathered them up in his hand. He stepped aboard, kicking gently away from the shore as he went.

Sonic dropped onto a bench and holding on to both sides of the boat, as Knuckles stepped half over and half around him heading for the stern as they drifted. He took up the long single paddle, and corrected their direction, but there was something off in the smooth motion of the craft.

He frowned and altered his stroke and started to make progress. Perhaps it was just the fidgeting of the hedgehog in the boat and the additional weight of two passengers when normally he was alone.

He was more than midway across and his arms starting to protest the additional drag before he was entirely convinced that something was really the matter with the boat. Surely it wasn't possible someone had been here in his absence?

He drew the paddle in and laid it down.

"What's the matter?" Sonic half turned, without letting go of the sides. "Don't stop!"

Knuckles shook his head, not sure himself yet and crouched down to reach over the edge of the boat and run his hand along the outside, below the waterline. It didn't take a second before his glove snagged on something instead of sliding over the smooth wood.

"What!" Sonic demanded as Tails moved to look and Knuckles held up a hand to stop him.

"The boat's been tampered with," Knuckles withdrew his hand.

This time Sonic's "What!" was twice the volume.

"Let me see," Tails said, but this time had the sense not to crowd over and unbalance the boat until Knuckles moved aside to allow him access.

The fox didn't stop at reaching and instead vaulted overboard, treading water and steadying himself with one hand on the boat while he stared at the device.

"Not good," was his verdict. "This is Eggman's."

Sonic's eyes widened.

"Row, Knuckles! We need to get off this boat, _now!_ Tails get back in… or… no… get out. Fly. Is it a bomb?"

"A bomb?" Knuckles found himself repeating.

"Well I doubt it's a helpful little outboard motor is it?" Sonic snapped. "Tails?"

The fox shook his head. "It _could_ be explosive. I don't know. I've nothing here to take it apart with."

Knuckles had started rowing again, Tails kicked his feet to stay with the boat as Sonic finally let go to pull him back on board.

How long did they have? How far away did they need to be? Should they abandon the boat?

No. None of them could swim fast enough to get clear. If they reached the other side then Sonic could _perhaps_ run fast enough. Tails could perhaps fly high enough right here if he didn't carry either of them.

"Tails," Sonic started. He'd already realised the same thing Knuckles thought.

"I'm not leaving you two behind," Tails said firmly. "We don't even know if it's going to go off. Whether or not it knows it's been discovered."

The idea that a detonation might be triggered by their own interaction with it hadn't even occurred to Knuckles and he would have thrown even more effort into paddling if he hadn't already been using his full frantic effort.

Sonic and Tails crouched motionless in front of him, doing their best to make it no harder but the remaining seconds it took to the shore still seemed an age. Knuckles didn't slow down as they approached.

"Jump," he warned the others tightly. "I'm going to run us ashore."

Sonic and Tails were already leaping by the time the prow crunched against the brickwork and perhaps the impact was the trigger because the explosion was simultaneous. Knuckles was as much thrown as he was propelled by his jump into the air. He felt the flare of energy from rings and Emerald respond in unison but Sonic's hand was on his wrist before his feet had hit the floor and the instant acceleration was dizzying.

"Keep running," he yelled against the slipstream once he was able to wrap his head around the fact they were still alive. There was no telling what damage might have been done to stability of the dams and canals and mechanisms which directed the water.

"You think?" Sonic gasped, sarcasm audibly even though his panting breath.

Knuckles didn't bother with yelling more than the occasional direction after that. Some instinct was driving Sonic upwards in any case and that could only be a good thing.

Eventually he skidded to stop and they all stood a second, breath held, listening for any evidence of rushing water inbound. There was nothing, but Knuckles knew better than to take that as a sign of safety. Any number of controls could have been damaged, water could be creeping in any number of places it shouldn't, rising towards exits, drowning safe routes, rendering calm, navigable waters into torrents somewhere between where they stood and the outside air. He was deeply uneasy, a nagging, aching sense of imminent threat which had not faded with their distance from the explosion.

"We need to keep moving," he said.

Sonic nodded, then unexpectedly, grinned.

"Well since Eggman wrecked our last ride, seems only fair we borrow his." The hedgehog pointed and Knuckles belatedly assessed their location and saw what had drawn his notice. Tails was already running over to examine what was clearly one of Eggman's flying pods.

Knuckles had to fight not to look away. Eggman had been here. Had imposed himself deep in the Island's interior and – Knuckles' breath caught with the abrupt realisation – was still here.

That was the danger, not only the water, not only the explosion, the risk of falling stone, but _intrusion._ A clanging warning siren in his mind, tugging his attention in the opposite direction to safety, deeper into Hydrocity, to wherever the trespasser could be found.

"Knuckles?" Sonic broke across his thoughts. "Buddy, you're doing the whole 'tune out the hedgehog and get spacey' thing again. Can you not? What's wrong?"

Knuckles shook his head. It had to be his imagination. He was disturbed by finding the boat meddled with and by seeing the pod. He couldn't have missed Eggman's presence. Not for this long. Perhaps in the confusion of their arrival and near drowning, but never at rest, never in the quiet of their over-night.

"Eggman's here," he managed to reply when Sonic continued to wait expectantly for an explanation.

Tails turned away from the pod and made a face. He looked strangely unsurprised.

"I was afraid of that," he said. "I was scared the bomb on the boat might have a trigger based on us fiddling with it – but it could easily have had a comms alert instead. And we know the ruby can teleport people."

Knuckles stared at Tails. "You think he might have only just come back?"

Tails nodded and the mixture of relief on top of the sense of alarm made Knuckles close his eyes for a moment. He hadn't missed it. Not really. But how much time had passed for the boat to have been trapped, for the pod to be here? They'd time travelled but when had they come back to?

"I have to find him."

Sonic frowned. "You mispronounced ' _we_ ' there, Knux. _We_ have to find him."

Knuckles hesitated, with his mouth already open to give directions to the surface while he headed back down to follow that sense of intrusion to its source.

Sonic raised his eyebrows and waited, too tapping out an urgent little rhythm on the wet stone that belied his stillness. Knuckles closed his mouth. Nodded tightly. Opened it again.

"I think I know where he is, but some of the route is almost certainly underwater by now."

"Well that sucks. Lead the way."

That seemed a totally contradictory response to Knuckles, but they didn't have time for him to figure it out, so he ignored it. Instead he eyed the pod. Taking it perhaps was not a bad idea after all. It gave them at least one extra option.

"Can one of you steer that thing?"

Sonic laughed. "I think Tails can't wait to try!"

In response Tails bounded aboard and beckoned. "Oh yeah, we have _so_ got this!"

Sonic grinned and joined him. "We get pulled over by traffic, Knuckles has to be responsible adult."

Knuckles reached for a response but came up blank. Were they taking this seriously? And yet Sonic was ready to head straight back into the depth of the watery underground tunnels he cleared hated, so how could he possibly call him out for frivolity?

He closed his eyes as much to dismiss the puzzle as to concentrate on the direction they needed before instructing Tails.

It was a wobbly start with all three of them jammed into what was intended as a one-person craft, but the fox was a quick learner and was manoeuvring them adeptly enough by the time they reached the narrower routes.

"Left," Knuckles said as Tails slowed at a turning. The place Knuckles wanted to reach was to the south and below them yet, but this was the second shortest route he knew – the actual shortest they already ruled out on the basis of the amount of water seeping through the emergency flood doors when they'd reached them.

The thundering sense of danger and urgency was diminishing as they got closer, as though the Emerald or Island knew he was aware, knew he was coming. He could deal with Eggman, was _eager_ to deal with him. Eager to put an end to this frantic runaround and confusion and fight after fight and being cast hither and thither until he hardly knew which way was up. At least here on the Island he knew his way, knew the dangers.

"Down there."

Tails sent them plummeting so fast Knuckles clutched instinctively for the edge of the pod but was distracted quickly enough by Sonic's yell.

"There! In the water!"

Tails threw the controls of the pod into reverse and brought them to a hover.

Sonic was right. Eggman was _in_ the water and Knuckles frowned. The water wasn't safe here, was full of treacherous currents and undertows even without whatever damage had been done to the systems that controlled it.

Sonic looked at him, clearly in no hurry to jump in, and this time that was the right choice.

"Uh now what?"

"He's got a powered scuba suit." Tails leaned over to watch as Eggman powered away from them in spite of the currents. "What's he doing?"

"He's placing more explosives." Knuckles stared in horror, wracking his brains for any out. He would have one shot if he jumped in. If he grabbed Eggman first time then he could… what? He couldn't outswim the current down there. The best he could hope for was to take them both out together. Was Eggman enough of a threat to risk depriving the Emerald of its Guardian? He could use the Emerald maybe, but that was erratic, unreliable. There would be no guarantee. Was the risk big enough to justify it? How dangerous was this ruby?

The pod rocked as Tails leaned back towards the controls, muttering to himself and throwing switches.

Knuckles looked back at the water, half inclined to jump in anyway. He could almost _see_ Eggman smirking at them as they hovered uselessly overhead.

Abruptly the pod vibrated violently.

"Tails..." Sonic started to ask but was interrupted by a sudden surge of water from below. It struck the bottom of the pod and spray cascaded up. Eggman floundered in the water below them.

"Don't you remember it Sonic? We've seen this particular pod before – from the wrong end though!"

Sonic grinned. "Oh yeah. Go for it!"

The pod moved lowering and closing on Eggman and then a second surge of water rose from below them, this time with Eggman splashing and flailing, and to judge from the look on his face, cursing, as he was borne upwards with it.

Sonic leaned out over the pod, recklessly far and made a grab for him. Knuckles hastened to help.

"Gotcha!" the hedgehog crowed as they both got a grip on an arm and dragged Eggman, half into the pod. He raised his head and grinned.

"Are you sure you wanted to?"

He twisted like a beached fish but reached a pack on his belt, pulled out another of the explosive charges and slapped it on the pod.

"Ten." he said calmly. "Nine."

"Bail out!" Sonic yelled. Tails grabbed him and rocketed upwards. Knuckles grabbed a blue ankle as it flashed past and was carried upwards and for a moment was certain they'd made it.

"Eight."

There was a yank on his own ankle and they were descending again. Knuckles looked down. A metal grappling claw tethered him and Eggman together and the weight was way too much for Tails at the top of the ridiculous stack.

"Seven."

The pod was still too close, and the water was lethal without the equipment which only Eggman had. Knuckles glanced up and saw the faces of Tails and Sonic looking down. Tails' face was screwed up in effort, clinging to Sonic. The hedgehog's was pure panic.

"Six."

"Tails, let go!" Sonic shouted.

Tails didn't.

Knuckles looked away. And let go.

The abrupt release of the additional weight sent Tails and Sonic hurtling upwards. He hoped Sonic would have the sense to tell Tails to keep going.

He hit the water kicking, in a flurry of limbs, striking out to try and free himself from Eggman's mechanical grip. The current already had them both and the surface and bottom of the channel swapped places in a tumbling, helpless spin. His head hit what had once been a step when this area was above water and his vision blurred. Where was Eggman? Where was the surface? Where was _any_ airpocket?

Something hit him in the swirling water and he flinched away in alarm. All of the explosives Eggman had been carrying were spinning and bobbing in the water along with him.

Knuckles fought back panic. The one of the boat had been impact triggered. One good knock and he'd be blown to bits before getting a _chance_ to drown. Something hit him hard in the chest and it was all he could do not to sacrifice his remaining air in a yell. He thrust it away as though that could possibly do enough to help and then reached for it instead as he realised what it was. The several air canisters to Eggman's suit were also loose down here. The one that had hit him had disappeared out of reach but he grabbed the next and fumbled with it to task several gasping breaths.

Swimming was impossible. Keeping himself oriented, clear of obstacles and getting the occasional gasp of air to breath was the bare minimum he could manage. The channel switchbacked around a corner and one of Eggman's devices loomed up ahead. Lit up and clearly already re-occupied and taking aim.

Knuckles took a chance and kicked one of the floating depth charges towards it. If it was drown, get blown up, or get shot, then he had nothing to lose.

This time he was lucky and the current snatched the kicked charge, turning it into a vicious projectile. The shockwave from the explosion as it struck Eggman's sub slammed through the water and for a few seconds Knuckles was deaf and blind and breathless, aware of nothing but Emerald energy racing through every limb like a feverish shudder. When he opened his eyes Eggman's sub had retreated again and he was suddenly aware of the cold of the water seeping into every limb. It was almost welcome. A contrast to the burning need for air which had his lungs on fire with the effort not to breathe.

His chest scraped the rough stone floor of the channel and he was dragged along it for long seconds until he clumsily pushed himself away with arms that felt way heavier than they should. He fell back onto his face and only then realised that he was laying in waist deep water, the current rushing over him but not longer carrying him with it.

Even so he nearly couldn't lift his face out of the flow, almost too exhausted to rise and how stupid would that be to drown at last in a bare few hands breadths of water? He rose to to his hands and knees, trembling and collapsed into a half sitting, half kneeling slump.

He nearly didn't notice the water starting to rise again. It was almost a surprise to find that he still have the energy to get back to his feet, once driven by alarm. He looked up and around, trying to relocate himself and plan an escape route.

He was at the bottom of one of the huge sumps scattered around the zone. The only way out was the sluice gate the water had drained by, back the way he'd come, or climbing. And only one of those was viable right now with the water rising. He looked up, reassessing the distance although he knew it all too well. Wet walls, hundreds of lengths high.

He gathered his composure and reached for the steady presence of the Master Emerald, somewhere nearby, dry and warm. He'd need its strength as well as his own to have any hope of an out.

"Knuckles!"

He froze. Staring upwards in the direction of the shout.

"Look out!"

A ship was plummeting towards him – Eggman's sub, transformed into an aerial vehicle and pursued by the pod which he'd assumed destroyed, Sonic perched on the edge, halfway out already and launching himself towards Eggman. Knuckles leapt clear, clinging to the wall as the force of Sonic's blow drove the craft hard towards the surface of the water. Spray flew in all directions and there was a grinding of metallic gears and a shriek of damaged machinery as the device rose again. The water level surged and Knuckles lost his grip and slipped back under. He kicked and twisted in the water, weary limbs refusing to cooperate, and weary mind refusing to process in which direction the surface lay.

Hands closed on his and then he definitely was moving _up_. He blinked water out of his eyes and Tails grinned down at him.

"Gotcha."

Knuckles nodded vaguely, too busy breathing to speak. Somewhere below he was distantly aware of the crashing and tearing of metal as Sonic jumped up and down on the Eggman craft and then Tails was lowering him into the other pod and Sonic was dropping down beside him and there was relief that was more than simply the realisation of survival.

"He teleported away again," Sonic said. "You okay?"

Knuckles laid his head back against the edge of the pod, completely limp.

"He's gone."

"Yeah. I said." Sonic smiled. "Are. You. Okay? Breathing. Air?"

Knuckles nodded. He was moderately sure of that. It was _why_ he was still alive that he couldn't yet understand.

"How did you find me?"

Sonic grimaced. "We didn't. You got lucky. We followed Eggman. Turns out his pods have a homing system."

" _This_ pod didn't blow up."

"Nope."

"It was a trick." Knuckles closed his eyes. " _Again_."

"I guess. Sorry."

"You shouldn't have let go!" Tails burst in.

Knuckles looked at Sonic who gave a tiny shake of his head which warned against arguing in spite of the fact he'd been yelling at Tails himself to let him fall and get away himself.

"Yeah, we'll debate that when we don't all look like wet rags, okay, Tails?"

Tails scowled but returned his attention to flying the pod.

"Which way is out?" he demanded.

Sonic caught Knuckles' eye. And winked.

"Up," Knuckles said. "Up, and then I'll tell you from there."

Tails threw a switch and they accelerated upwards, leaving the remains of Eggman's intrusion laying half submerged below them.

The was midday when they emerged. The sun stood high overhead, and so bright it was dazzling after their stint underground. It was hard to believe that it was still so early in the day. Knuckles felt as though they'd been fighting in the dark and the wet for a hundred years.

"You got a nice packed lunch stashed somewhere, Knux?" Sonic asked, clearly feeling the same. "I reckon we've kinda worked off last night's supper."

Knuckles nodded and they abandoned the pod to walk to the nearest cache – he didn't want any of Eggman's tech anywhere near those places he might use as a refuge. Tracking worked both ways, regardless of the fact it have pulled him out of trouble this time.

"The Tornado is still up here," Tails said suddenly halfway through their meal, as though he'd only just remembered.

That seemed a long time ago to Knuckles as well.

Sonic tapped his fingers against his empty plate.

"Hmm. So where next. Where do we think Eggman's basing this insane lark out of?"

Tails shrugged. "Dunno. But the gear for tracing the ruby was in the Tornado. If Eggman's hasn't been at it, that's our best bet."

Fed and watered, they ran back to where Tails had left the aircraft. While the fox examined the machine for tampering, Knuckles examined the area, looking for pretty much the same thing. He was restless. The idea that Eggman had been here, in his absence, long enough to interfere in Hydrocity weighed on him. What else could have happened? He needed to comb the whole Island, to reassure himself, to remove – _again_ – all trace of the intruder.

"All clear!" Tails called happily and Knuckles looked round. The fox was still clambering over the aircraft. "Not much space though with all this tracking gear aboard. It'll be a squash even with you on the wing, Sonic."

Knuckles made nothing in particular of this remark until Sonic turned to stare from him back to Tails.

"Tails…" Sonic hesitated. "I don't… know that Knuckles is coming with us?"

Knuckles stared in turn at both of them. The question hadn't even crossed his mind. He was back on the Island. Neither Eggman, nor his new weapon were here any more. It ought to feel like the end of it, surely.

The end of his part in it.

So why didn't it?

Because Eggman was still a threat? Because with the ruby he could still come back? That was a loose end. But Sonic had that well in hand. Didn't he? Sonic certainly didn't need his help. Whether he owed it or not.

Knuckles frowned. He _did_ owe it perhaps.

He started a mental tally but got no further than the most recent dousing. It was a hopeless endeavour. Sonic had pulled him out of trouble, he'd pulled Sonic of trouble. It was uncountable and in any case none of it outweighed the first time. Outweighed Sonic going on when _he_ couldn't, retrieving the Master Emerald when he couldn't. Returning it when Knuckles couldn't have stopped him from refusing to do so.

There was nothing Sonic couldn't ask him for in recompense and he'd asked for nothing at all.

Just the thought of how it could have gone instead made Knuckles reach out on instinct to the Emerald he hadn't even laid eyes on since returning. Serene and untouched, at least as of yet, it calmed him. There was no answer to the problem there, but the still calmness of mind that the touch of it required was enough to let him see he own decision making more clearly.

He was going, and all his stewing about it was because he wasn't sure if he should. One way or another, this fight of Sonic's was his now too.

"I'm going," he said. Sonic grinned. Hugely and out of all proportion to Knuckles' expectations.

"Awesome!" the hedgehog said. "Good to have you. Let's go show Eggman what he's up against!"

Tails looked round a smile on his face as well.

"All aboard!"


	9. Mirage Saloon

"All aboard" had turned out to be over-optimistic and Tails had spent the rest of the afternoon trying to rearrange and reroute the wiring of the equipment to back room for a rear-seat passenger.

By the time he'd achieved it, dusk had fallen with the equatorial suddenness of the Island's current position and Knuckles led them to shelter for another night. Sonic had half expected him to have changed his mind about coming by morning, but instead he was the first of them up, almost before the sun had risen and seemed eager to be off. Or maybe just to have the whole endeavour over and done with.

In spite of Tails' efforts, he had been right about the cramped quarters and Knuckles looked distinctly uncomfortable squashed into the rear seat, although he'd folded himself in amid the equipment with no verbal complaint.

"Won't be long," Sonic grinned at him in cheerful apology from his perch on the wing as they climbed away. This reassurance went ignored as Knuckles watched over his shoulder until clouds obscured the Floating Island from their view then turned his attention to the equipment instead of responding.

"You found the Island with this?" he asked, and Sonic realised the echidna's frown was driven by more than the cramped seating.

"Not exactly," Tails answered before Sonic could. "I think it was responding to the ruby. But the fact it was up in mid-air in the middle of nowhere kinda gave away that it was either your Island or Eggman."

Knuckles made a non-committal sound, that seemed only marginally reassured.

Sonic considered pointing out that strictly speaking it had turned out to be both, but thought better of it. Instead he had another go at reassurance.

"No one who didn't already know would have guessed," he said. "I mean, a flying island? Bit of a leap, right?"

Knuckles nodded slowly but looked no less unhappy about the situation. He stared silently at the canyon-riven desert being revealed below them in the dawn light. Sonic wondered if he was already regretting coming with them.

"And it's going to help us find him now." Sonic kept trying.

"Him or those robots," Tails pointed out. "I'm not entirely sure there's not something weird going on there. Don't they seem a bit _too_ independent to you?"

"Eggman's own robot uprising?" Sonic grinned. "I could actually get behind that."

Tails nodded enthusiastically, laughing.

"A taste of his own-"

He stopped abruptly.

"Tails?" Sonic prompted when he didn't either continue or launch into an explanation of what had caught his attention.

Tails glanced up. "There's a reading."

Sonic blinked. "Good? That's what we're after yeah?"

"Yes, but… It's _right_ here."

Everyone looked round but it was obvious that the steadily warming sky was still and silent, the ground below unmarked by any movement, or any sign of life apart from a glimmer of sunlight on an empty railway track.

"It's gone." Tails stared at the screen again and Sonic shrugged and looked back to see Knuckles' reaction. The echidna was poised half out of his seat – the mere mention of a possible fight, apparently having snapped him out of whatever doubts he might have had about coming.

"It's back!" Tails shouted. "It's-" His yell was drowned out by the ringing din of the ruby's effect and for a moment Sonic thought they were teleporting again. He dropped into a crouch, hung onto the wing and closed his eyes to ward off the dizziness of the spinning world, but hastily opened them again as the aircraft rolled violently left with a shuddering bang.

Tails shrieked and Sonic flattened himself against the wing in near instant reflex as something hurtled by on a second pass, close enough to rattle his quills. Sonic sprang back to a crouch, scanning the sky for their attacker as Tails shakily brought the aircraft back to level.

"Tails! Are you okay?" Tails had sounded totally panicked but he was still in control of the aircraft so not badly hurt.

"It hit Knuckles!"

Sonic snapped round to look.

"It hit him! He fell!"

Tails' voice hitched. "It came out of nowhere, right into us. I couldn't-"

"You couldn't have dodged it, buddy. It's not your fault."

Sonic watched the robot weave above them. Almost in invitation it looked like. No sign of Eggman – was Tails right about them challenging Eggman for the ruby? There were more important things to work out right now.

"Knuckles will be okay. He can glide, remember? Once we deal with this guy we'll land and we'll find him. Okay?"

Tails started to protest but another pass from the robot saved Sonic from having to agree that yes there was a chance Knuckles might have been knocked out or injured badly enough that he was unable to reach the ground safely.

Instead of dwelling on that, he leaped at the robot – which _blurred_ in the air, surrounded for a moment by the same sickly swirl of colours that preceded the teleport. Tails tracked underneath him with the aircraft in a practised move, his own worries also buried for the moment by the need to fight here and now.

The robot flickered out of reach, taunting and bobbing in the air. It swept them a mocking bow and with a conjurer's gesture and the same bubble of lights, disappeared entirely, leaving in its place a giant metallic worm which dived towards them. Tails snap-rolled the aircraft out of the way, trusting to Sonic to hang on, and the worm missed, plunging past them to the desert floor.

Tails banked and descended, though Sonic wasn't sure if he intended pursuit or landing. Whatever his intention had been it was over-ridden, as with a plume of sand trailing behind, the worm leaped for them again. The long, looping arc gave Sonic more than enough time to assess where the most effective blow would land and where on the spiky metal carapace had to be avoided.

He was on target, smashing into one of the connecting links between the huge segments and sending the robotic creature tumbling in two halves towards the desert floor.

He landed neatly back atop the wing, grateful as ever for Tails' accurate piloting.

"Hope it's not like a real worm and we end up with two pieces both coming at us," He smirked.

Tails shook his head. "I don't think that's really a thing, Sonic."

Sonic smiled, watching the sand carefully for any indication of further attack. So carefully he almost missed Tails' abrupt change of direction and was thrown to one knee, hand whipping out to grab the wing's leading edge before he slid right off.

With as little warning as the robot had given them, they were surrounded by airborne robots and the air was thick with bullets.

Tails dived hard, there was no point even trying to dodge that lot if it could be avoided. The robots followed, rocket-propelled and armoured. Tails ran a gauntlet of rocky outcrops and towering cacti, the wild manoeuvres keeping the aircraft bullet-free but hindering any plan to strike back. Sonic settled for hanging on as Tails' aerial contortions sent their pursuers spinning out of control or smashing into one another in their attempt to follow.

He pulled up as hard as he'd dived, flattening Sonic to the wing once again and rolling level off the top of half a loop. The sky was clear of pursuit.

Giddy with adrenalin and actual dizziness in equal measure, Sonic laughed.

"That was some flying!"

"Not enough," Tails said. "The tracker just lit up again there's-"

"-More." Sonic said a split second too late, as from nowhere one of the rocket-propelled robots hurtled towards them. Sonic had a distant impression of its rider – a bird of some sort, and the weapon in its hand, before an almighty bang sent them diving once again.

Tails yelled once and then fell silent as the aircraft laboured under the sound of mechanical protest. Sonic kept quiet to let Tails focus on his attempts to keep them in air, or failing that, a survivable landing.

A further crack from somewhere behind Sonic sent the aircraft pitching wildly and Tails yelled again.

"That's it, Sonic. We need to jump!"

Sonic waited. They'd planned this. Practised on the ground even but the reality was a lot windier and more difficult. Tails undid and shrugged off his harness, then fighting the wind resistance, and with a quick glance at Sonic, kicked up and away from the porpoising aircraft. Sonic gave it a second and then leapt in the same general direction, throwing up his arms as he'd done before in any number of circumstances, with just as lethal potential outcomes if Tails missed.

He didn't miss. Two sets of hands met as practised as acrobats and they were flying under Tails' power instead of the aircraft's.

Tails descended rapidly. They had no idea what other attackers were near and this was not the easiest of positions to fight from.

Sonic looked around. This was not hospitable terrain to make a forced landing and they had no supplies, no knowledge of the area. He scanned out further – he needed at least a direction to run in, some sign of a town or camp or habitation of any kind.

His eyes lit on movement and he pointed with a waved foot.

"There's a train."

"Uh huh," Tails didn't waste breath answering but changed direction to intercept it.

Sonic grinned. If this worked it'd be like something out of every wild west flick ever. Leaping onto a moving train to escape a gunfight in the desert plains…

As they closed on the approaching train however a problem became apparent.

"That's..."

Sonic filled in Tails' trailed off sentence. "Eggman. And here I was hoping for a nice cool soda in first class. Oh well!"

There was no question of changing the plan. Tails continued his approach and as the train whipped by below them he let go. Sonic landed in a crouch and caught hold of Tails as he dropped out of flight beside him.

They both found handholds and took stock. The train was heavily loaded, barrels and crates and some low-loader cars carrying nothing but enormous tankers.

"Whatever all this is for it can't be good," Sonic said. "Fancy turning bandit for a while and hijacking a train?"

Tails looked at the horizon behind them for a moment. Sonic could guess his thoughts. Somewhere out there the Tornado had ploughed into the ground. Somewhere out there Knuckles might be badly hurt. Somewhere out there the robot that had attacked them was maybe not destroyed and still had the ruby.

But the train was where they were and Eggman was driving it.

After a moment Tails mustered a smile.

"Let's do it."

* * *

Knuckles came to, falling, this time with no references, no orientation, his view filled with nothing but sky. The wind blew his quills up around his face and with no idea how close to the ground he was, he stiffened and flared them, instinct acting before thought and snapping him round in the air with a wrench that felt like it had come close to snapping his head from his neck.

He flinched, unable to prevent it and tumbled, off balance and out of control before he managed to slow himself once again. He could see the ground now and it was moving too fast. A faint dust devil tracked across the landscape, warning of the start of the first thermals of the day and he tried to steer away from it. The effort sent the pain in his neck arcing and branching through his back and shoulders and didn't come close to achieving the desired effect. He ploughed into the twirl of sand and grit, afraid to close his eyes against it for fear of losing even more control.

The updraft tugged briefly at him but he was out the other side and into the sink before he could react. There'd be no landing off this, this would be a full blown crash and all he could do was reach for the Emerald he'd left behind, pull together what he could from that contact and hope to survive the impact.

* * *

Sonic and Tails ran along the top of the swaying train, leaping from carriage to carriage, giving half their attention to the shifting footing and the constant slipstream and half to the contents of the train.

They'd stopped once, at Tails' insistence, to examine them, although the very fact the chemical vats were emblazoned with Eggman's logo was enough to let them know some of what they needed.

"What's he making?" Tails wondered aloud as they ran for the front of the train.

Sonic shrugged. "Not any more of it, whatever it is."

They came to a stop perched on the rim of a heavily loaded freight car behind the tender. The freight was loaded precariously high and consisted mainly of lethal looking traps, laser weapons, and deactivated robots.

"Where is this train going?" Sonic stared around. "These are invasion supplies. We need to stop this train."

Tails examined the robots. "I've got an idea, but it's going to make rather a mess..."

Sonic grinned. "I've got an idea what your idea is. Gonna make this lot go boom?"

Tails nodded.

"How long d'you need?" Sonic glanced ahead.

"Long enough to make sure the stuff in here 'goes boom' without setting off a chain reaction that's going to blow those chemical containers and cause a massive spill."

"Which is how long?" Sonic tapped a toe. "If Eggman knows we're on board, we've got a weird lack of opposition here."

"Maybe he doesn't," Tails suggested. "Maybe he saw the Tornado go down and thought it was his lucky day."

Sonic frowned. It was possible but somehow it seemed too easy.

"I should go look..."

"And then he'll _definitely_ know _,_ " Tails pointed out, already working on disassembling the nearest battery pack.

Sonic scowled. Eggman was in the next train carriage. They could grab him right now. Maybe. Or Tails could be right and there could be any number of reasons Eggman was so confident in the defence of this train. If they tried and failed then he might get away with a trainload of dangerous supplies to unleash on some as-yet unsuspecting zone.

He couldn't risk it.

He settled down to wait, glaring at the inactive robots and daring them to so much as twitch.

* * *

Knuckles opened his eyes but stayed stayed flat on his back, fighting to catch his breath. His eyes were watering from dust and he blinked ineffectively, the discomfort the least of his worries.

He took a mental tally of his situation. He was alive, which in itself was a minor miracle which he had the Master Emerald to thank for. His neck and back ached fiercely and when he put a hand to the floor to push himself upright his shoulder responded with a blinding shock of pain which nearly put him back out.

He hung onto both the fading aftermath of the chaos energy and consciousness but the energy was finite and needed to get back on his feet before it was exhausted.

He rolled onto his side and used the uninjured arm to push himself upright. He must have landed on the other shoulder. The last thing he remembered amid the leaping crashing surge of chaos was rolling himself into a ball to protect as much of himself as he could from the unforgiving rocks.

Swaying, he stood and surveyed the surroundings. Surviving the fall was only half the battle. Even from the air this place had seemed almost lifeless.

Knuckles was familiar with desert survival, but he realised as he looked around at this arid place how much of his knowledge depended on an unshakeable sense of direction, of knowing which way was _out,_ where the safe routes were, where the rare water could be found, which of the plants were edible.

This place was utterly unfamiliar.

The rising sun had been behind them when they were flying in. If Tails had been taking a straight-line course to their destination then he had that as a minimum to go on. He had no idea of distance. Sonic had said "not long" but there was little enough to be assumed from that. Was he certain enough of how long he'd been unconscious to take the sun for a direction or did he need to wait and build a sun compass?

He paused to consider the chaos energy still dispersing slowly around him. There was nothing there to suggest more than a few minutes had passed since he crashed. Nothing to suggest he'd been unconscious in the sun for long enough for morning to have passed into evening.

There were plants around him. Tall, spiky succulents, but nothing that offered any shade. If it was still early morning then the best thing he could do was seek shelter before the worst heat of the day. He had no idea where Tails' tracker had been leading them, if it was straight to an Eggman base then arriving at it having newly slogged across a desert was perhaps not the best option. There'd been a railway track in sight as well though. Away to their right, a glimmer of metal in the low sun. Railways had to lead somewhere. They needed fuel, repairs, passengers, and their passengers and operators needed food and water.

He chose his direction and took up a sustainable pace.

* * *

Sonic was back on his feet and had all but worn a groove in the floor of the freight car by the time Tails looked up.

"Ready for a bang?" he asked before Tails had opened his mouth.

Tails nodded. "Think we should give fair warning?" He nodded in the direction of the tender and engine ahead.

Sonic smirked. "We should wave goodbye at least."

He hauled open the carriage door, and stuck his head out into the wind.

"How long between 'go' and 'bang'?" he asked, looking back at Tails.

Tails shrugged. "How long do you want?"

Sonic grinned. "You tell me, buddy, you're the air evac here!"

Tails smiled. "I'll give us a minute or so."

"Then let's go!" Sonic held out both hands. Tails made a minor adjustment to his set up then launched himself across the carriage, snatching up Sonic and carrying them both back into the air.

Contrary to Sonic's suggestion they did not return to wave at Eggman, instead climbing hard to clear the blast area. The train leapt, jackknifing into the air like an eel. The engine crashed down askew and sprawled across the tracks.

Before it did so however, a section of it detached, explosively and rocketed away into the air.

"Huh," Sonic said, dangling below Tails. "Shoulda guessed he'd have an out."

"So where now?" Tails asked. "All the tracking gear was in the Tornado."

"Follow the rails and hope someone down there's seen or heard something," Sonic said. "It's not like Eggman and crew are usually inconspicuous."

Tails climbed further, seeking a view over the horizon for signs of civilisation.

"There's a town."

"Course there is. Railways all lead somewhere! Betcha that'll be where Knuckles heads too. Go ahead and land us buddy, and I'll have us there in a Sonic second."

Tails descended and in moments they were off and running, a rooster-tail of dust rising behind them to join the dustdevils.

* * *

Knuckles was starting to doubt his assumption that 'railways had to lead somewhere' or at least concede that, while it was true, it didn't mean that such places were walking distance apart.

The sun had passed the overhead and although the terrain was changing steadily around him, the buttes and mesas he passed offered no shade at this time of day. He had slowed down considerably and his head was starting to ache along with his other injuries. He was thirsty as much for the fading trickle of chaos energy that was keeping him moving as he was for the water which he'd found no trace of here.

The dusty sand covered granite bedrock only a handspan down, as he'd discovered when he'd given on on seeking shelter and decided to try and dig his own. Given time and energy and he could smash through stone, but he didn't have anything like the energy reserves needed here and now.

So he walked on, eyes fixed on the dazzling thread of the railway line like a magpie entranced by the glitter. It had become a mental lifeline. He was following the tracks. It was dangerous to walk in the desert without a reference. You could trail in circles all the while believing yourself to be moving forward. At least that wasn't a risk. He was following the tracks. The sun moved slowly across the sky and he tried to tally up how long he'd been walking. Had he walked further than they'd been able to see from the air yet? Surely there had to be something to see soon. He couldn't be lost, the track was right there at his left hand.

You could go round in circles in the desert. You could get confused. Had he been walking this side of the track all along? He'd stopped to rest. Was there a risk he'd lost track of the time and the sun and the direction. Was he following it in the right direction still?

He stopped, hesitating but his breath didn't slow as it should at the rest. He looked up and down the track. Even if he had to double back it would be worth it if there was any shade at all.

Walking like this, well past the time he'd intended to stop was dangerous. Through the confusion and the heat, some self preservation instinct reminded him of the fact. He stopped and fought to clear his thoughts. Somewhere up ahead a faint pall of smoke rose into the air from an indistinct shape at ground level. It was the closest thing there'd been to signs of life since he started moving and perhaps it had caught his attention through the haze of heat and thirst. Summoning his remaining strength he walked toward it. A derailed train. Empty of any sign of life and surrounded by unidentifiable pieces of its cargo scattered on the scorching ground. Too exhausted to speculate on the cause, Knuckles crawled in among the remains of one of the smashed and upended carriages, sheltered from the heat of the ground below and the sun above, and closed his eyes.

* * *

Sonic slowed outside the town to let the dust of their passage settle. No point in ticking people off before they'd even said hi. Tails brushed dust from his fur and together they strolled into the town which was quiet in the heat although heads turned at their arrival among those few people who were about on the dusty streets.

Sonic looked around. At least his own face didn't seem to appear on any Wanted posters here – although the place was positively plastered with those of a trio identified as variously, bandits, bounty hunters or the comparatively understated 'notorious hooligans'.

Sonic gave them a glance and thought, but couldn't be certain, that one of them might have been the bird that had fired at the Tornado - there was always the chance Eggman would resort to local lackeys if the help was offered.

Their choices for seeking information seemed to be the handful of people chatting lazily on the shaded verandas adjoining the street, an empty-looking post-office and general store, or a slightly livelier looking saloon.

Sonic went for the nearest option, heading over to the closest porch.

"Hi! We're looking for some people."

A bison nearly twice Sonic's height stood up slowly.

"Some folk round here don't wanna be looked for."

Sonic shrugged but grinned, "Yeah that's probably true for one of them. But you won't have missed him. Human with a mob of robots? Kinda noticeable? No?"

The bison grunted at him, but shook his head.

Sonic smiled. "Oh well. And the other one's a buddy. Kinda hoping he _does_ want to be found, or find me. Red echidna?"

The bison raised a heavy eyebrow. "You been drinking?" He stomped back to his seat. "No machine-men. No extinctees. Go spin your story someplace else. Try the horse camp outside town, they like a storyteller."

Sonic blinked at him then looked at Tails. Among the friendly or hostile reactions he might have expected, disbelief wasn't among them.

"There's other places we can ask," Tails said. "Shall we try the shop, or the railway station, or somewhere? People must be coming and going who might have seen something."

That made sense and Sonic followed Tails to the shop. It was impossible to tell what it sold since the windows were plastered with the wanted posters, almost entirely obscuring whatever was for sale within. Still only the face of the bird, bear and weasel they'd seen already but the shopkeeper recognised Sonic even so, although he hadn't seen Knuckles. He did however pass on the most recent news at the railway halt was that the train had not arrived. Sonic decided not to volunteer the reason for that but did ask around. The only thing out of the ordinary which anyone could recall was an unclaimed shipment of stores on the previous train.

"Stores of what?" Sonic asked the coyote in the shipping office.

He shrugged. "I don't have a habit of opening other folks' goods. _Everything_ gets shipped in here. Do we look like a town with a huge manufacturing industry? Could be anything."

Tails frowned. "But stuff doesn't normally get abandoned, right?"

"No, but travel takes time and stuff gets mixed up. Someone'll turn up for it."

"And where is it in the meantime?"

The coyote narrowed his eyes. "What's it to you?"

Sonic touched Tails' shoulder in warning.

"Nothing. Just curious. Maybe our friend ended up on the wrong train too."

The coyote shrugged. "Could be. Try the Mirage."

"The mirage?"

The coyote rolled his eyes. "The saloon? I see all the train passengers, but they see _everyone_."

Sonic nodded. "Okay. Good idea. Thanks."

They headed away.

"I don't like the sound of it," Tails said. "What if that shipment's Eggman's too? It could be dangerous."

Sonic nodded. "Yeah, we should check it out."

" _And_ we've got to find Eggman! _And_ Knuckles!" Tails' ears lay flat on his head in distress.

Sonic also frowned – what to tackle first? He hated the idea of maybe leaving Knuckles stranded somewhere out there in the desert, but all the same reasons for tackling the Eggman risk first still held, as they had at the train. Knuckles was a survivor, and this town had no idea what might be about to hit it.

"Knuckles is tough as old boots, Tails," he encouraged. "If he hasn't found his way here by the time we've figured out what's going on, I'll go find him. Okay?"

Tails nodded slightly doubtfully but prepared to take Sonic's word.

Sonic picked up the pace. The town wasn't large. Finding a stash of Eggman tech should be easy.

* * *

"Hey!"

Knuckles flinched, the shout drilling into his aching head.

"Hey, pard, you okay there? You don't look okay there."

Belatedly Knuckles processed the noise and tried to get up, succeeding only in giving his thumping head another knock against the collapsed side of the carriage above him.

"Take it slow," an unfamiliar voice advised. "Here."

And then there were hands on his shoulders and ankles which he was too disoriented to do anything about and he was pulled out of his rough shelter back into the sun. He groaned at the pressure on his injured shoulder and closed his eyes against his will at the sudden light. He swung blindly at whoever had dragged him out into it.

"Watch it!" a different voice said and then, in a different tone added, "Take it slow. Take it easy. You're safe."

The hands let go and Knuckles staggered two steps away before tripping over one of the many lumps of debris and landing heavily on his tail. He shaded his eyes and looked up at the two figures who he hadn't quite identified as either assailants or rescuers. Both wore guns strapped to their side but neither had drawn them and a vulture's long beak curved in a smile as its owner pulled a broad brimmed hat off his head and dropped it onto Knuckles' own.

"Better?" he asked.

Knuckles blinked at him from the blessed shade of the hat's brim.

"Looks kinda sunstruck to me." The other figure, a dusty coloured hare with long tattered ears, put her head on one side consideringly and pulled a water bottle from a pack over her shoulder. She held it out.

"Slowly," she warned.

Knuckles nodded. He knew that.

The water was tepid, and stale tasting but welcome and wet his mouth enough that he was able to unstick the words from his throat.

"Who-"

That was the wrong question. 'Where' was the better one. But before he could try again they'd already answered.

"Jackie Blacktail," the hare tipped her hat. "That's Len Penvelyn. We came to have a looksee what'd happened to the train when it didn't show. Were you on board?"

Knuckles shook his head and immediately wondered if that would have been a better explanation than the real one. A better way of avoiding questions. He knew nothing about these people after all. Nothing except that they hadn't attacked him or ignored him, when either would have been easy to do.

"I don't know what happened," he said instead of volunteering an alternative. "I was following the tracks when I found it."

Blacktail frowned. "Following them from where? You're a fair old way out and this ain't good country for a stroll."

"I was in an aircraft. It-" Knuckles hesitated unsure how much to tell. More than one place they'd traversed had been under Eggman's sway. Announcing himself as an enemy of the man might not be wise. "There was an accident. I got stranded out here."

"Bad break," said Penvelyn. "Well if ya ain't got a problem waiting while we recce, you can ride back to town with us. We got a handcar. Get this down you, meantimes."

He rummaged in his own pack and handed Knuckles a slightly charred slice of what looked like part of one of the cacti he'd wondered about, the prickly parts burned away. Edible after all then. Knuckles accepted it and nodded.

He had no better ideas and the town, presumably, was where he'd been heading. Sonic would have the sense to assume he'd head there wouldn't he? The thought occurred that he didn't really know for certain that Sonic and Tails had survived whatever had sent him plummeting to the ground. He dismissed the thought. There was nothing he could do about it if they hadn't survived and nothing he could do to help if they were also stranded. Not until he was fed and watered and rested. In any case, if they were on the ground Sonic had a better chance than any of them of getting clear of the desert quickly enough to be safe.

He didn't think they'd go on without him. So the town was the only logical next destination.

He alternated slowly drinking and chewing down the food and watched the examination of the derailed train. Had Eggman been involved? There was smoke and soot damage but he didn't have enough expertise to tell an accidental boiler explosion from sabotage or hijacking.

Whatever it had been carrying was littered across the ground and the hare and vulture poked at it with their boots and talked it over. As best Knuckles could make out, it wasn't what they'd expected to find on board.

He forced himself to his feet, taking another swing from the water bottle as he staggered slightly and almost ended up on his knees. He wove his way towards the nearest piece of debris and stared at it. Mechanical parts, twisted beyond recognition. Could have been a robot, could have been a legitimate vehicle engine. Further down the track, huge barrels had rolled away from the overturned train. And these Knuckles stopped and stared at.

"I know who loaded this train." It came out as a croaking whisper and he gulped from the bottle again. "And I know who attacked it."

He looked up the track in the direction the train had been travelling.

"He'll try again. You need to warn your town. I need to find them. They'll have gone that way. I need-"

"Y'need to sit down." The hare's hand landed on his shoulder. It seemed unreasonably heavy and Knuckles felt himself sag under it.

"Y'need to finish drinking that." Her other hand came up under the bottle pushing his own hand back up towards his mouth.

"And y'need to get outta the sun." The vulture extended a wing obligingly over Knuckles' head and extended his long neck to look around and under it.

"You're babbling there, pard. Try again. Way too many 'he's and 'they's in that last go."

Knuckles struggled to order his thoughts, sipping at the water bottle when Blacktail prompted him a second time.

"Eggman's mark is on those barrels. I think Sonic and Tails attacked it." Knuckles realised abruptly that names might not add any clarity at all, remembered once again that he had no idea how widespread Eggman's reach or Sonic's notoriety was. "Do you know who..."

Blacktail nodded. "By hearsay, sure. Ain't sure where a red..." he paused, shrugged, but didn't ask, "where _you_ come into the story? On the right side I hope?"

Knuckles hesitated, too startled to be anything but honest. "I… try to be."

Penvelyn sniffed. "That'll do. Trouble in the road if that ruckus comes to town though. What's your name, pard?"

"Knuckles."

"Well howdy, Knuckles," said Blacktail. "But ain't nothing we can do here. Need heavy kit to shift that lot. Might as as well get back to town and see if that hedgehog's pitched up." She reached down a hand to Knuckles. "Up you get."

Knuckles let himself be pulled back to his feet once again and followed Blacktail to a metal contraption on the rails.

"Sit there." She pointed. "Keep that hat on. Keep drinking. Me an' Len'll pump."

Knuckles wasn't entirely sure what she meant until she gave Penvelyn a nod and he heaved hugely on a see-sawing lever. Blacktail, still not aboard the contraption, gave it a shove, and ran alongside for a few paces before swinging herself aboard and seizing the other end of the lever.

Knuckles found his hands straying for something to hold onto as they picked up speed but there was nothing. He tried to assess the speed but the viewpoint from sitting so low down and the rattling and clanking of the device made it hard to compare with walking or running. In any case it was easier even if it was uncomfortable.

With nothing to do but not fall off or get smacked in the head by the swinging lever, Knuckles' mnd wandered habitually to the Island and the Master Emerald. A concious touch of it to check on it's security brought an abrupt onrush of energy and he frowned. He felt better for it but why had it taken that deliberate contact? How much did he rely on the constant background touch of its presence on the Island? He'd never been away so the Island so frequently or for as long. Had he never noticed because the contact was so automatic there?

Like the ride there was nothing he could do but accept it for now and be grateful for the belated relief.

The town couldn't have been far after all and was soon in sight. Blacktail and Penvelyn let the handcar coast to a stop and jumped down. Knuckles climbed off and to his feet after them.

"Best bet for finding your pards will be the saloon," Blacktail said. "And anyhow, we need to get something more substantial than a slice of prickly and one bottle of water in you."

Knuckles felt considerably better but Master Emerald assistance or no, he did need actual food and drink as well and he had nothing to trade but what he stood up in. He was unhappy being in debt to these strangers, even as lightly as they seemed to take it but he didn't really have any choice.

"Thank you," he said in lieu of anything else to offer. "You didn't have to."

"Sure did," Penvelyn smiled. "If folk don't look after each other way out here, ain't no hope for any of us."

"Come on, I need a drink that don't taste of desert dirt too." Blacktail stepped ahead of them and Knuckles and Penvelyn followed.

The saloon was populated but not busy and the bartender, another vulture, looked up as they entered.

"Jackie Blacktail." He cast a glance at Knuckles and drawled, "Still picking up strays?"

"Howdy, Mel," said Blacktail evenly. "Biggest juice pitcher you've got, and it'll be dinner as well."

The bartender turned to the shelves without further comment and Blacktail turned to Knuckles as he subsided at a table.

"Anything you don't eat?"

"Chilli," Knuckles answered firmly at once.

Blacktailed smiled. "It'll be bean stew then."

Knuckles nodded. "That sounds fine."

Blacktail went to the bar to order and Knuckles lifted Penvelyn's hat from his head to hand back. The vulture waved him off.

"Keep it. Suits you. And you look like you need it more than me."

Knuckles lowered the hat back onto his own head, unsure if to do otherwise would be rude. He was aware that Sonic would have been busy chatting by now, finding out more about the people he'd ended up with.

He was saved from having to make conversation by Blacktail's return.

"Guess who was just in here?" He went on without waiting for an answer, dropping into an imitation of the bartender's drawl. "That hedgehog from outta tha papers..." She resumed a normal tone. "Guess who he was looking for?"

"Eggman," Knuckles said.

Blacktail's ears flicked back in surprise.

" _You!_ "

"Oh." Knuckles started up from his seat, inexplicably embarrassed at having missed his guess, but sat back down before he'd even fully risen. If Sonic was ahead of him already, he'd never catch up.

"Did he say where he was going next?"

"Na," Blacktail shrugged. "But him and the fox kid took a room so they'll be back. You can eat up and get rested and your pards'll be right along."

* * *

At the opposite edge of town, where the houses and small shops gave out to desert and a dusty railway siding, Sonic eyeballed a large warehouse. It was same dust-dry wood construction as the rest of the buildings and there was nothing in particular to identify it as a potential Eggman stash except for the fact there were no other obvious candidates.

Tails looked mournful. "If I had any of the gear from the Tonado I might be able to rig something to tell if there were robots in there."

Sonic shrugged and grinned back. "I know a faster way to find out!"

Tails giggled. "Of course you do!"

Sonic held out a hand and Tails didn't hesitate.

Somewhat to Sonic's suprise there was no increased sign of hiden technology springing to life as they got closer. The wooden doors gave giveout even a spin dash - Sonic simply shoulder barging through them.

They skidded to a stop inside. Dust settled around them.

"It's empty..." Tails started to say but in the next instant it was clear he was wrong.

A blinding flash made them both squeeze their eyes shut, and when the oepned them the place was transformed. Hung about with purple and green, stars and glitter. Had they moved again? Or had the whole abandoned warehouse effect been faked somehow?

There wasn't time to worry about it because they were already under attack and they'd been wrong on that count too because it was one of the robots and not Eggman at all, that swooped down on them.

It was same conjurer-styled machine that had attacked them back on board the Tornado and it was with the same gesture that they were suddenly surrounded by the trio from the wanted posters.

Sonic spent a split second wondering if they'd been hidden, or teleported there or if they were even real and not robot replicas but he was already diving clear of the bullets of one and the bombs of the other. From the corner of his eye he saw Tails duck a swing from the huge bear and bound back up straight into a spinning attack of his own.

Sonic tore into a racing start from his crouch on the ground which took out both of his assailants at the ankles. The fall didn't stop either of them firing and Tails dropped from the air. Sonic knew a moment's panic but the fox had only thrown himself flat to the floor to be clear of hail of bullets.

Sonic leapt clear of an un-aimed bomb and leapt instead for the robot conjurer which was laughing mechanically up above their heads. He was sure he was on target but the air shimmered and somehow he was out past the thing with no blow landed.

Tails was scuffling in mid air with the bright green bird, twisting and turning as he tried to part him from the bandolier of explosives draped about him. The bear was still picking himself up and looking for targets in all the wrong directions, so Sonic redirected his attack to the dangerously erratic shooter, a skinny purple weasel who seemed almost entirely indifferent to which of his presumed allies were in the line of fire.

Sonic made a last minute attempt to moderate the force of the blow but still closed his eye as his spin dash made contact – smashing robots was different to the damage he could do to a real person but someone was going to get killed if those bullets kept flying and he couldn't afford to wait and think of a better solution.

The impact though did not feel like flesh and blood. He struck with a dull thump equally unlike both flesh and metal and, with a flicker, the weasel disappeared. Sonic frowned even as a certain amount of relief washed over him.

Tails had shaken off the bird, who'd spun off into a wall and disappeared with the same dull thump of impact. Tails was left holding half the string of bombs while the other half went scattering to the ground.

Sonic dodged and dived and evaded them all, but the bear – or bear-a-like- _thing_ was not so lucky.

That only left the robot, and as it swept its conjurer's top hat off its head with a bow, Sonic had a nasty feeling they were in for an encore.

"Tails!" he shouted. "One for me!"

Tails caught his intention instantly and tossed one of the little round bombs in the air – not directly to Sonic, but towards the robot. Sonic dived for it, catching it in mid air and slamming it the rest of the way – straight into the robo'ts top hat in the half a second before it slapped it back on its head.

The was a bang and another sickening twirl of light which left them both unclear whether or it had been destroyed or teleported once again away.

Tails landed as Sonic picked himself up from where he'd dived for cover.

The warehouse was empty once more and Sonic made a face, coming to the conclusion that it had been for some time.

"Trap?" Tails asked.

"Trap." Sonic shrugged. "Let's get back to town. Maybe Knuckles has turned up."

* * *

Knuckles was well fed and no longer thirsty and the only thing keeping him from nodding off over the table was the unshakeable, ever-present unfamiliarity of this place.

There was no threat, everyone he'd met here had been either actively welcoming or mildly curious. There was no obvious way to find Sonic and no obvious way to head for home if he couldn't so there was nothing to do but wait.

It shouldn't be as hard as it was.

It was though, and he must have made some sound of discontent because Penvelyn smiled at him.

"I'm sure your buddies'll be back soon. Way they tell it, nothing much slows up that hedgehog."

Knuckles sought for some appropriate answer but found himself caught up on 'buddy'. He hardly knew Sonic yet he was certain the hedgehog would use the same term, putting him, however casually in the same category as Tails who the hedgehog seemed to consider practically family.

Penvelyn didn't press for an answer, instead returning his attention to the game of cards he was playing with Blacktail. Knuckles couldn't tell who was winning and wondered if he should have accepted instead of declined their offer to teach it to him. At least it would have passed the time.

A flurry of dust and noise outside snapped his attention away from his half-hearted attempts to figure it out by watching, and then Sonic and Tails were bursting through the swinging door into the saloon.

They both scanned the room in a way Knuckles recognised as once as practised and alert and then Tails launched himself into the air, over the tables and towards Knuckles who jumped to his feet to intercept another of the ballistic hugs he'd received in Hydropolis.

Tails stopped himself short though, grasping both of Knuckles' upraised hands instead and letting himself be drawn back down to a landing.

"You're okay!"

"Told you!" Sonic grinned, although Knuckles didn't miss the quick up and down glance the hedgehog gave him – making sure.

"Cool hat," Sonic said instead of commenting on the results of his assessment. Knuckles couldn't tell whether the hedgehog was taunting him or not, so let it pass.

"Gonna introduce us to your famous hero buddies?" Penvelyn asked, rising lazily from his seat beside Knuckles as Blacktail lifted her hat from the table purely to put it back on her head long enough to raise it in greeting.

Knuckles nodded. "Sonic, Tails, this is Len Penvelyn and Jackie Blacktail. They helped me after the crash."

Sonic cheerfully stuck out his hand to each in turn, and Tails followed suit with enthusiasm.

"We owe you one then," Sonic smiled at the two of them while giving Knuckles a clap on the back.

Knuckles glanced at him, surprised at the remark - half at the idea that Sonic would consider Knuckles' safety something he himself would bear any responsibility for and partly at how lightly he seemed to accept such a debt.

Blacktail wrinkled her nose. "Seems like if you keep Eggman clear of this township, that's one done and settled."

Sonic smiled readily. "Well, that's the plan! Looks like he's cleared out for now though."

There was a crash from outside and all heads turned.

"Or not," Sonic said, without a flicker of concern.

The swing doors crashed open once again and tumbling through came an enormous machine. Knuckles had seem similar caterpillar-styled bots before but never at this scale and he leapt back from it to avoid being crushed as much to avoid an attack.

A bison, head lowered, tumbled in after it and sprawled straight onto the floor.

Sonic was already in mid leap.

"Tell me again, Tails, how smashing it in half wouldn't end up with the bits coming back at us?"

Tails looked dismayed but Sonic was already laughing again. "Oh well if a whole one couldn't do the trick, half a one sure won't!"

Blacktail and Penvelyn had dived to haul the bison who'd first attacked the thing clear, but now stood with weapons upraised but unfiring. Doubtful of the effectiveness or worried about the risk of ricochets from the metal, Knuckles guessed.

Fists did not present similar problems and Knuckles ducked both teeth and spikes and leapt for the bot's head. It reared upwards as he did so and he twisted violently in a gliding swerve to avoid a facefull of metal. Sonic surged up past him in another enormous bound which reached just high enough to clip the thing's head, sending it thrashing wildly.

Then Tails was at his shoulder. "Need to get higher?"

Knuckles nodded and reached for Tails's offered grasp. They whisked up into the air and Tails gave him a little extra swing towards the lashing head where Knuckles planted both fists and hung on.

"I think those antennae are _actually_ antennae!" Tails shouted over the din of crashing metal, Sonic's shouts of provocation and the panicky emptying of the saloon under the bellowed orders of Blacktail. "It's remote controlled. Take them out and I think we're good!"

Knuckles did wonder a moment whether lack of control was actually a good thing but without solid reason to refuse, he went along with Tail's suggestion and released his grip on the armoured head to swing instead for the stalky metal antennae. The blow was on target but off balance and he pitched forward and off as the robot dropped away beneath him.

This time it was Sonic who was instantly there, catching his arm and pulling him clear and back onto his feet almost in the same motion.

The segments of the robot rolled lifeless across the floor and everyone drew breath again.

The saloon had emptied but many people appeared to have only gone as far as the street and now peeked back in.

The bison, Blacktail, and Penvelyn were still standing at the door watchfully where they'd guarded the retreat, but not followed, and Sonic gave them an acknowledging nod.

Blacktail retrieved her hat and fanned her face with it before picking up the one Knuckles had been wearing and handing it back to him with a wink at Penvelyn.

"It's a bit more intense than the newspaper pics make it look when it lands in your front room," she said.

"Yeah," Sonic agreed. "Thanks for having our back."

Blacktail glanced now at her re-holstered weapon. "Aint sure it'd have helped much if it came to it. What're we supposed to do if he comes back?"

Tails and Sonic glanced at each other and Sonic nodded.

"The train that didn't turn up was full of Eggman tech," Tails said. "I bet we can salvage enough to get you set up with enough to defend yourselves."

"You've got people willing to stand up, that's half the battle," Sonic agreed. "Too many zones haven't been as lucky."

"This is a railway town," Blacktail said. "We got mechanics, people who can run salvage ops. We'll stand, you don't have to worry about that."

Sonic grinned. "Good to hear!"

Tails smiled. "Speaking of salvage I wouldn't mind seeing what state the Tornado ended up in. There's kit on there that it's going to be real hard to find this ruby without."

Sonic nodded. "We can do that. But those trains were going on to Oil Ocean right? Safe bet that needs to be our next stop."

They travelled together as far as the train, the next morning – Sonic and Tails laughing and riding the handcar as though it made specifically for their amusement. Back at the train, Tails walked some of the railwaymen through the tech on board – the bits of it which had survived his and Sonic's attack and would be useable with repair.

Penvelyn and Knuckles meanwhile, took to the air to scout for the Tornado. The thermals were as intense as the previous day but, rested and uninjured this time Knuckles rode them with enthusiasm for the easy height they gave him.

It didn't prove difficult to locate the aircraft. The bright colours stood out clearly in the drab desert.

Neither of them felt able to make a realistic assessment of the damage so they returned to the others where Knuckles, Sonic and Tails made their farewells.

Sonic declared his intention to come back to visit and Tails nodded enthusiastically.

Knuckles was unsure if he was expected to make a similar promise but managed to avoid being asked. He settled for farewells and thanks.

"Look after yourself," Blacktail said.

"I do," Knuckles answered.

"And my hat," Penvelyn added.

"Yes," Knuckles touched the brim. "I will."

"Ready?" Sonic said, holding out his hands for the others to take and glancing at their audience. "You might want to clear the area, folks. Gonna be a bit of dust kick-up here."

Most took him at his word but Blacktail and Penvelyn only tucked their cotton scarves up around nose and beak.

"Go for it," Blacktail said.

Sonic shrugged.

"Here we go!"

And they were off and outrunning the dust left in their wake although it seemed like mere seconds before the Tornado came into view.

Knuckles holding his hat on with one hand and Sonic smiled as they came to a stop and he looked round, but didn't comment.

"They were nice," Tails said.

Sonic nodded, with another sideways look at Knuckles.

"Most people are."

Tails was already up to his shoulder into the Tornado which was clearly unflyable although not in as many pieces as Knuckles would have expected.

"Think they'll help us again if I come back here to rebuild once we're all done?" Tails said over his shoulder.

"I'm sure of it," Sonic smiled.

Knuckles was turning his hat over in his hand.

"I almost lost this running here. It's not going to be safe while there's more fighting to do."

Sonic looked suspiciously as though he was fighting laughter again but Tails nodded.

"You can stash that here too," he said. "I mean we're going to need some way to get you back up on the Island. Or we can bring it up to you."

Knuckles ignored Sonic and nodded at Tails. "Yes. Okay"

Sonic tapped his foot. "Okay okay, plane safe, hat safe, can we get on now? Do we have a clue for direction or not?"

"Not," Tails said sadly. "The tracker didn't make it."

"Oil Ocean then?"

Tails pulled a face. "I hate that place."

"Yeah, not my favourite either, buddy," Sonic agreed. "We'll just have to blast on through there in double-quick time right?"

Tails looked up at Sonic and his expression turned fierce. "Right!"

He put out his hand, Knuckles did the same and once again they were running, eating up the desert heading for the distant, smoky horizon.


	10. Oil Ocean

They reached the shanties before they reached city-turned-industrial-plant and Sonic slowed to what was a jog even by normal standards to avoid blowing the windows and doors off everything they passed in the ramshackle village.

People here hadn't fled as far as Sonic would have expected when Eggman took the place over. Maybe some of them held out hopes to returning and reclaiming the place. Others, he knew for certain traded relative safety for technical expertise in the refineries and fuel depots.

Most just got by, caught between fear of staying and fear of the unknown of leaving. Scraping a living, just far enough outside of the zone of pollution to be able to raise some sort of crop. Pale corn and stunted orchards lined the roadside

Regardless of which category the inhabitants fell into, almost all ducked inside their rough homes and shut the doors firmly at the sight of Sonic and the others approaching.

"They're afraid of you here too?" Knuckles said. "Eggman's lies again?"

Sonic shook his head. "It's not that." It was an effort to keep his voice light. "They don't think _I'm_ dangerous – but they know helping me is. They're living on Eggman's doorstep after all."

Tails looked around. "I never know why they stay."

Sonic shrugged. "I suppose it's home. Or was."

Knuckles made a sound of agreement.

Sonic glanced at him but he didn't seem to have any further comment to make. Sonic returned his attention to the road ahead and then to the flicker of movement from behind a wattle fence sheltering a vegetable garden.

A grubby, not-quite teenaged, seagull stuck his beak up, glanced over his shoulder and then quickly, waved.

Sonic grinned and tossed back a thumbs up and a wink

The bird leapt into the air and fled, swooping up and over the nearest house, but not before Sonic caught the returned smile.

"They'll be okay," Sonic said, turning his attention back to their route. "It's not forever. We'll stop Eggman. Even here. One day."

They were past the make-shift village and Tails reached for his hand for a speed-up almost automatically, Knuckles a moment after him. Evening was coming on although the lurid orange on the clouds owed more to the burning plumes from the smoke stacks ahead than it did the sinking sun. Sonic had no desire to venture into the industrial mire after dark and as soon as both of the others had a solid grip he opened it up and let all the frustration turn itself into speed.

He didn't slow as the filthy coast approached, merely adjusted course for one of the largest criss-crossing pipes that connected the huge refineries and drilling platforms to the shore. He felt Knuckles' grip increase to crushing intensity and glanced over his shoulder.

"Gonna need that arm back in one piece when we stop, buddy."

Knuckles didn't look up, from the newly-learned low-drag position he'd opted for, but ground out a reply through gritted teeth.

"Just… shut up and focus on where you're dragging us, hedgehog."

But his grip did ease up from imminently bone-breaking to merely painfully tight and he let go immediately Sonic came to a stop. He staggered a few paces clear and looked around. He was scowling but he looked more angry at the existence of the place than as dazed and shaken by it as he had been back at Chemical Plant.

Sonic couldn't quite see it as progress somehow but there was a more imminent problem.

"Knux, move! Get off that!"

He dived for the echidna in the same breath as the pressure-cap blew. Heat and movement tumbled them both into the air. Orange sky blurred together with green flame and his head struck the metal rim of the cap turning blurred to black for a moment and there was no way he'd get his legs back under him in time and no way of telling what they'd land on and they hadn't been here _two minutes!_

Furious frustration snapped his awareness back into focus and he belatedly realised he was falling way slower than he should have been. Slower even than the time-dilating adrenaline of the moment could account for.

And it wasn't just the soot and fumes in the air making it hard to breath. A crushing grip around his ribs made every breath a struggle. He glanced up to find Knuckles looking down and then Tails was above both of them and dragging Knuckles higher into the air.

The echidna smiled grimly down at him.

"Still want me to ease up the grip?"

Sonic drew breath with difficulty and glanced down. "Er. It's fine."

Tails lowered them onto the nearest stable platform and everyone caught what breath they could under the circumstances.

Knuckles walked to the edge and looked back at the pressure cap settling back into its place.

"Eggman's not big on maintenance." Sonic said. "Sorry. Me and Tails knew this already. Prob should have had a bit of a convo about the place before piling in here."

"Anything else?" Knuckles asked.

Sonic grimaced. "Don't fall in. Don't touch anything you don't have to. Don't linger. Watch your footing. Don't breathe too deeply. _Really_ don't fall in."

"Noted." Knuckles voice was a monotone of rigid self control, the momentary humour vanished once again. "Do you have a direction?"

Sonic looked around, eyes coming to settle on the cranes that were in motion everywhere.

"There's so much new building… but yeah. I think so."

He led off, more cautiously this time.

They navigated their way among and over the cranes that were in the process of adding even more to the construction. The robots running them ignored the trio, even when Sonic diverged from their route to smash those in reach.

"How did it _get_ like this?" Knuckles asked unexpectedly.

Sonic shook his head and shrugged. "I'm fast but I can't be everywhere. If I'm here I'm not in Chemical Plant, or Metropolis or chasing down massive flying machines. It's like trying to stamp out wildfire. There's always somewhere Eggman or his bots can dig in."

A pressure cap hissed near by and everyone leapt sideways to be clear of it as it blew. Thick sooty smoke filled the air and Sonic sped up in spite of the dangerous footing to be clear of it. Another blew somewhere nearby, out of site in the smoke and another from somewhere ahead.

Sonic hesitated, coming to a dead stop.

"This… isn't good."

The smoke was getting thicker, but the alternatives were press on, almost blindly or suffocate here.

"We need to keep moving," Knuckles said from somewhere at Sonic's shoulder in the gloom.

"We might be able to get above it," Tails said. "I can't carry you both for long but..."

"Fly up and check," Sonic said. "It might not reach far." They could get a best direction at least.

Tails started to answer, coughed instead and then took to the air, the down-draft sending the smoke spiralling around Sonic and Knuckles.

Tails was out of sight in seconds, although the steady swish of his flight was audible through the smoke.

"Its-" he began from above them but was interrupted by a thud and a yelp.

"Tails!" Sonic yelled, straining his eyes and neck to see up through the smoke, leaping up to try and catch a glimpse.

There was another crash of impact and something came hurtling out of the smoke. It clattered against the ground – an enormous wrench.

"Tails!" Sonic yelled again as another crash came from the smoky air. Sonic reminded him that Tails was clearly still flying, and there'd been no further cries. Knuckles was pacing beside him, eyes also upwards, seeking the source of the sounds. Both of them helpless to intervene

They both ducked as another crash came from what sounded like inches above their heads and a rotund and denting and smoking bot hit the deck between them. Tails was clinging to the back of it.

It sparked once and went still.

Sonic blinked in the eye-watering smoke and reached out to haul Tails back to his feet.

"Nice one."

Tails frowned in spite of the praise. "I'm not sure it was a good idea. It came at me so I couldn't do much else but I think it was meant to lock this lot down."

"We need to get out of here," Sonic agreed.

"The smoke is spreading everywhere," Tails warned him. "I couldn't see any safer way."

"We'll find one." Sonic said, more confidently that he felt. "Come on."

They were silent as they made their way along. Sonic wasn't sure if they were walking on actual walkways, or pipes, or parts of the construction machinery half the time. His only concern was that their next step would be onto something at least semi solid.

It was only a matter of time before it wasn't. Before a split in the pipe they'd been cautiously descending had spilled slick, thick oil to ooze down the surface. Sonic felt his foot slip a split second too late to change his mind. Knuckles yanked on his arm to pull him back but that only meant Sonic found himself tipped backwards, off-balance to land on his tail in the stuff and by then gravity was against them and Knuckles was sliding along with him, pulled face first into the same wild slide.

Tails launched himself into the air in pursuit. A breathless scattershot chase of flailing limbs and slippery misses. They shot out of the bottom layer of the smoke and Sonic would have been glad of that except they were on course to be tipped straight into the roiling oil-thick water beneath the drilling platforms. Sonic kicked and struggled to get himself into some sort of position to jump or reach Tails, and didn't manage either. Knuckles' was still loosely grasping one hand, apparently by reflex as it was helping not at all.

Then, at last, both of Tails' hands closed tightly on his kicking leg. He felt himself slide but Tails' fingers tightened, digging in and locking around his ankle.

Sonic looked down as he felt himself hauled out and away from the pipe. Knuckles' hand slid through his and dizzy and dangling, Sonic gasped for breath to shout.

"Knuckles! Hold on!"

Knuckles tightened his grasp but he was still slipping. This wasn't the solid wrist-locked grip they'd used before. Knuckles had barely managed to grab him at all, and under his own weight and slick with oil, his hand was sliding out of Sonic's own. Sonic reached out his other hand as Tails struck out for the nearest jetty. He wasn't sure Knuckles could even see his attempts, reaching out blindly and missing every grab Sonic made for him.

Sonic gritted his teeth. There was no more use yelling but Knuckles was going to fall any moment.

Something hit him hard In the ribs and it long a startlingly long moment for Sonic to realise it was deck of the jetty. They were down.

Tails landed half sprawled atop him, gasping and wheezing for breath. Sonic rolled out from under him and put an arm around him to pull him up to a sitting position.

"Good job, buddy. Take a sec."

Tails nodded, leaning heavily against him.

Knuckles rolled to his hands and knees, retching and scraping the oil from his eyes and nose and mouth.

"Knuckles?" Sonic said. "You okay?"

Knuckles coughed and spat, before sitting up on his knees and blinking at Sonic, eyes and nose streaming.

"That, hedgehog, is a damned stupid question."

Sonic laughed and stopped himself quickly at the mildly hysterical tone in it.

Knuckles scowled at him. "I'll live."

Sonic was preparing a suitable comeback when he was pre-empted by an electronically amplified crackle of laughter.

"Oh do you think so? I beg to differ. Such a waste of my beautiful octobot's time though, when you came so close to wiping yourself out for me."

The oily water below them stirred, mounding up and bursting into filthy scattering droplets as a robot submarine breached the surface. Metallic tentacles lashed about it and the glittering eye of a laser swung towards them so lazily low it was in clear mockery.

Sonic groaned. "Seriously? Now?"

All three of them staggered to their feet and Sonic played for time to at least draw breath.

"So how the robot rebellion going, doc? Your little metallic buddies looked they they were off doing their own thing a couple times we've run in to them lately. Sure this ugly dude's still on side?"

There was a pause long enough for Sonic to know that one had landed and then Eggman's voice snarled out of the craft's speakers once again.

"Let's see."

The laser fired but Sonic was already in motion and had snatched the others along with him in a dash that carried them to the brink of the jetty then into a leap that was dragged higher still by Tails.

Knuckles tugged at his his arm and Sonic released him into a ballistic glide that met the rising sub with both fists. Knuckles ripped into panels and clawed his way to the base of the laser as it spun and fired again. Tails dropped like a stone to avoid it and Sonic's feet touched the jetty for a split second before he kicked off and hurled himself at the craft, twisting in mid air into a spin. Tails caught him as he ricocheted off, swung around in the air and launched him back again for a second strike.

There was cursing instead of laughter coming from the speakers now. Knuckles' tearing up of panels must have compromised the thing's retreat into the oil. The laser swung wildly, unstable where Knuckles had bent the telescopic arm of it. He had an arm drawn back to finish the job when another panel opened and something unidentifiable struck like a snake, knocking him into the air to slam into the edge of the jetty.

Sonic turned to check he wasn't going to end up into in the mire but Knuckles had one set of claws dug deeply into the metal decking and was already pulling himself up. Sonic turned his attention instead to finishing off the laser with a spin dash. The lethal metal eye tumbled beneath the sludge and Sonic whooped but was interrupted by a yell not of triumph but of alarm from Tails.

He whipped round but it wasn't Tails who was in trouble but Knuckles – a swarm of metal tentacles was tearing down the jetty, dragging it under, into the lethal water. Knuckles was fighting to force his way past them to jump clear and Tails was fighting to make his way down to lift him off but neither was making much progress.

"Oh dear," chuckled Eggman's voice. "Smash me or help them? Poor little hero. It must be such a hard choice"

Sonic was already running across the top surface of the machine. Knuckles was knee-deep in the oily water already and Tails was reeling after a shot by one of the lashing tentacles.

"Not even a little bit!" Sonic leapt, catching hold of one of the tentacles in mid air and swinging off it run along the switchback of another and propel himself from there to land beside Knuckles who had torn one of them in half and was using it to swing at the others.

Knuckles glanced over his shoulder and gave him room, dropping the tentacles he was holding to resort to fists instead. Sonic exploded upwards in a trajectory that took out three and once and cleared the way for Tails to dive down, grab an arm each and haul them clear.

Behind them, an escape pod fired into the air from the sinking sub and disappeared out of sight. Tails shook his head as he dropped them on the next jetty over.

"He got away again."

"And where do we go from here?" Knuckles asked. He had a point. Sonic looked around. The jetty was the last one standing in eyeshot after the destruction by laser and the lashing tentacles. A single sub was secured beside it but underwater was the last option on his mind.

He sighed. "I guess there's only one choice."

Tails headed towards the craft. He tipped his head on his side curiously. "There's something… odd about the design here you know."

"Odd?" Sonic asked.

Tails nodded. "I think..." A grin spread across his face. "I think we need to do another bit of hijacking..."

Knuckles looked at Sonic who shrugged and let Tails run out the mystery until they were on board and Tails had found a way to activate it. The sub vibrated into life and started to move.

But instead of sinking, they rose.

Sonic laughed in surprised delight.

"A flying submarine?"

Tails grinned.

His amusement lasted until they were well above the zone and the craft started to move forward instead of up. Tails was peering at the controls and screens and abruptly spun round to face the other two.

"I've… kinda got mixed… news."

"Well?" Knuckles asked before even Sonic could.

"I can't steer – the autopilot is locked on a destination."

"Bad news but not awful," Sonic agreed. "We're not crashing, right?"

Tails glanced nervously at Knuckles.

"Right, but… The locked destination is the Floating Island."

Knuckles' eyes widened. "How? Why?"

"That's… news..." Sonic allowed, casting Knuckles a wary glance and waiting for the rest of the bad news.". "But we want to get back there at some point right?"

"But how could the location be known and stored here? What does Eggman want there? He knew I wasn't there. Is he after the Master Emerald? What's this thing carrying?" Knuckles sounded close to panic.

Tails winced. "That's also sort of more bad news." He pulled up a screen with a visualisation of the cargo area.

"Badniks," Sonic said.

"Hundreds of them," Tails agreed unhappily.

Sonic whistled through his teeth. "Yikes. That's not a raid, that's an invasion."

"We have to change course. We have to take this thing down. We can't go there like this. Not with those one board! We have to destroy them."

Knuckles was halfway to the door to the cargo area.

"You can't go back there, Knuckles. It's not pressurised and we're already too high."

Knuckles frowned. "But the Island's not that high. Not right now."

"I think he thought a high altitude approach would stop us intercepting him."

Sonic was watching Tails, who was fiddling with his ear nervously.

"What else, Tails?"

Tails stared at the controls in front of him before answering.

"I can't reprogram the autopilot and this thing wasn't designed to fly without it. But I can disable it. Prevent us landing."

"Make us crash?"

Tails nodded.

"Ye-es." If we wait until we're actually over the Island then disable it and bail out..."

"It could crash anywhere!" Knuckles protested. "The damage..." He cut himself off. "...is still better than landing hundreds of robots. Do it."

And then they waited.

Sonic paced in spite of a growing tiredness. Tails alternated dozing and fidgeting with the controls and screen, double-checking what he meant to do. Knuckles sat with his back against the wall, eyes shut though Sonic couldn't tell if he was napping or not. He didn't interrupt him to find out.

In any case he opened them a split second before Tails said, "We're here." Sonic walked to the screens and found Knuckles joining him.

"How tired are you?" Knuckles asked Tails brusquely. "Who's taking Sonic?"

Sonic bristled at being discussed like luggage.

"Hey," he said. "Hedgehog standing right here."

Knuckles shot him an unsympathetic look. "And unless that hedgehog has learned to fly or glide in the last few hours he'll still be standing there when this thing piles in to the Island, chaos-knows-where, so back off."

"Truthfully, Tails, there's no shame in knowing your own endurance." Knuckles, to Sonic's utter surprised gave the fox a smile. "Believe me, we're all close to the end of it right now. Even your blue buddy there."

Knuckles dashed Sonic a look, daring him to contradict him. Sonic shrugged instead.

"He's got a point."

Tails glanced at Sonic, then back at Knuckles and nodded.

"I guess… I could use the help."

Knuckles nodded and made no more of a deal of it than that. Instead he turned his attention to Sonic.

"How about you, hedgehog. Have you got enough left that I can carry you, not piggyback you? _Without_ getting in my way?"

Sonic recalled how Knuckles had grabbed him when the pressure cap had thrown them in the air.

"I've skydived, Knux. I know what you want to do. We got this."

Knuckles stared at him. "I won't get myself killed because you lied to me about how tired you were, Sonic. I can't. I have responsibilities. I'll drop you first."

Sonic bristled again, glaring back. "I'm not a liar! If I say I can do it I can do it!"

Knuckles watched him a moment longer.

"All right. I believe you."

Sonic gave him a mocking bow but didn't push him any further. They were all tired and not only physically. Now was not the time to try anyone's patience too far.

"When, Tails?" He asked.

"Now," Tails said. "Almost. I'm working on it."

The first sign he'd succeeded was a rapid nose-over that sent Sonic and Knuckles skidding across the floor. Tails had held tight to the console and glanced back. "Sorry. This thing is horribly aerodynamically unstable. I'm not sure it even _can_ fly without the computers. Let's go."

The spiral dive tightened as they hurried for the hatch. Sonic and Tails both hesitated glancing at the other and then Tails shrugged, smiled and took off. "See you down there."

Sonic stepped up to the hatch, holding on to the edge as Knuckles positioned himself behind him and hooked his legs around his and wrapped his arms across his chest.

"Arms out," he instructed. "Not quite sure how steering is going to go like this. Just… keep still."

"Got it," Sonic didn't bother to joke, the tension in Knuckles' voice too much of a warning against it.

He let go of the doorway instead, reached his arms out to the fast moving sky and let Knuckles' weight against his back topple them forward and out.

Wind and gravity instantly snatched at them in opposite directions and Sonic gritted his teeth, holding position against both as best he could, limbs and back protesting in unison.

For several moments they simply fell, Sonic didn't have breath to question it, or breath to sigh in relief when the descent slowed, though he heard Knuckles gasp at the effort. He tried to take in where they were. He wanted to look round for Tails but didn't dare move even that much.

He heard the fox calling out anyway. He was fine, flying and close by. Below them the ship spiralled into view outpacing them in its headlong descent. The ground below was dark, cut through with lines of glowing orange and red. The dark jungle beyond it in one direction and pale meadows in another might as well have been a hundred miles away, their descent was a lot closer to vertical than Sonic would have liked and Knuckles, if anything was steering closer still to the volcano.

Warm air joined the wind in Sonic's face and the descent slowed a little, a cautious gentle turn swung the view around and back again as they circled down.

Sonic reminded himself that it was only an illusion that the ground seemed to be moving faster as they approached it but he hadn't quite convinced himself by the time it was upon them and he was skidding along it. Dirt in his nose and the breath knocked out of him.

Knuckles let go, clambered back to his feet and then flopped down again, dropping his head behind his knees and breathing in huge gasps. After a moment he put both hands flat on the warm ground and looked up.

He gave Sonic a nod and Sonic grinned back, rolling onto his back, hands behind his head as though sunbathing. "See. We got this! Right?"

Tails touched down beside them, interrupting whatever Knuckles' reaction might have been.

Tails was wide-eyed but this time it was glee.

"The ship went in right in the volcano!"

"First bit of good luck we've had," Knuckles muttered. "I need to check on things here. I need to know how Eggman knew where to find the Island."

Sonic nodded.

"No problem. I'm curious about that myself!"

Knuckles stared at him and Sonic prepared to line up counter arguments when the echidna refused them entrance to his so secret shiny stone store room, but they didn't come.

"We 'got this' too?" Knuckles asked, sounding half incredulous at the words coming out of his mouth.

Sonic grinned. "Betcha!"


	11. Lava Reef

Knuckles stood up and took stock of their surroundings. They were high on the volcano's windward slopes, the dark ground made darker by the angle of the sun, already below the island and sinking below the surface's horizon a mile below. Close enough to the lava fields that an orange red glow from the exposed magma supplied some replacement for the fading daylight.

Eggman was not here. Knuckles could feel a tug, a call, towards the Master Emerald. An uneasy disturbance, but nothing like the frantic need it would have been had there been an actual enemy presence here. Indeed it could almost be just his own anxiety reflected back at him, or some reaction to his recent absence.

Still, he longed to have eyes on it again to be sure, completely sure, all was well.

"This way." He led off diagonally across the slope, past the hot springs and around to the opposite side of the hill. The crater wall was higher here, more intact. This side of the volcano had not seen active flows in as long as Knuckles could remember, but their traces remained. He led the way into the lava tube network, letting the entranceway seal behind them and pausing just inside to check the ancient indicators for temperature and pressure. Tails watched curiously.

"What units are those using?"

Knuckles blinked. "I don't know what you mean."

"How hot is hot?" Sonic asked, but it seemed to be a joke – in any case Tails ignored it so and Knuckles did too.

"They look incredibly old," Tails was still lingering, peering at the devices. "Who design-" He cut himself off, guessing the answer. "You don't know."

"No," Knuckles admitted. "Come on. I've checked the route we're taking. It's safe."

Sonic looked around and Knuckles recognised the eyes of a practised navigator of trouble as the hedgehog's glance paused on the geyser outflow vents, on the almost concealed supports of the rock deadfall, on the slightly scuffed trigger points in the ground.

Sonic's eyes returned to Knuckles himself and the hedgehog raised his eyebrows. "Not sure you use that word the same way most people would."

Sonic was smirking but Tails outright laughed.

"Oh and _you_ do, Sonic?" The fox sprang lightly into the air before either of them responded. "Which way, Knuckles."

Knuckles beckoned and led off without further comment.

It was an effort of will not to turn down the path to the nearest shelter – he was bone weary. The day in Oil Ocean seemed to have lasted a year at least and the time since he'd first woke to robots on his Island might have been a century.

But this close to Hidden Palace and the Master Emerald 'bone weary' didn't matter much and he was uneasy enough that he had to see it before he had any chance of sleeping. Even if it meant leading Sonic and Tails back there too.

He caught that last thought as it rose in his mind and squashed it down firmly. He did not distrust Sonic, he was not a threat. Knuckles glanced across his shoulder at the hedgehog loping effortless alongside him and got a cheery grin back, oblivious to the momentary lapse.

The air grew steadily warmer and the light redder as they ran on, until they were crossing bridges that swayed in the warm air over rivers of magma. Up wooden trestle staircases spanning gaps in cut-stone steps and leaping arches across black chasms with only the faintest streamer of crimson light winding at the bottom to give any clue of their depth.

Knuckles took mental notes on automatic as they ran, alert to any change in the conditions, whether they matched the sensors reports, where the wood had been baked so dry it threatened to become brittle, whether the traps were still concealed effectively, anything that might need attention.

And always, always for any sign or sense of trespass.

Even so it came as a shock to find it. A visual intrusion so abrupt that he startled as though it had been a shout or a blow instead of a sight.

Sonic reacted more to his own reaction than the sight but also came to an abrupt halt.

"That's some cheek," he remarked staring at the metal fence that barred their way. Or at the 'no entry' sign specifically perhaps.

It hung there like outright mockery, in lurid, Eggman colours.

Knuckles tore it down, taking half the fence with it, and hurled it, with more force than probably required given that it landed in the nearest lava flow.

Knuckles clenched his fists, but there was nothing except the pathetic fence to hit and it barely counted even as a barrier. He settled for uprooting another panel of it before a sudden urgency drove him through the gap and onwards.

"Knuckles? What's up?" Sonic asked, once again at his side. "Eggman?"

Knuckles shook his head. "Something colder. Stranger. Machines?"

"The Ruby?" Tails asked.

"I don't… know."

Knuckles sped up, sidestepping a scatter of spike-bombs that had been wedged perilously in the geyser outlets, and inadvertently making Sonic leap even further aside to avoid being shoulder-barged aside.

Sonic, for a wonder, didn't remark on it and Knuckles ignored the trap itself. Whoever or whatever had placed it was more important than dealing with it right now.

He skirted the lava lake at a flat sprint, the hot air drying the sweat in his quills as as quickly as it could form. Sonic was a half pace behind, and the speed apparently sufficiently effortless that he felt the need to narrate their surroundings, commenting on the scale of the cave, the lava, the heat, the twinkling starlight that could just barely be seen now and then through open outlets. Tails was airborne, surfing in the hedgehog's slipstream, a hand on Sonic's shoulder for a tow.

"What's _that?_ " Tails' voice momentarily raising over the top of Sonic's made Knuckles look round.

What had caught the fox's attention was another intrusion into the landscape. It looked like the bottom half of one of the giant robots, a giant walker, cut off abruptly had what would have been waist height.

"Someone been wading around knee deep in lava down here?" Sonic said.

Knuckles detoured a handful of steps out of his way and leapt to launch a flying kick at the device in passing. It toppled into the lava and sank beneath the surface.

"Not any more."

He ran on. Past where the lake broke up into a ragged patchwork of flows, subsiding below the rocky ground only to ooze up again a few paces later. Bridges and less-tended scaffolds criss-crossed it, reaching almost to the roof in places where it once again sloped down to become more tunnel than cave.

He stumbled, caught himself and stopped. It wasn't just the light that had become erratic – the contrast between bright red and black cave playing trick with his depth perception. There was debris on the floor. Rock that looked like it had been chewed up and spat out.

"There's something-" he started an explanation, a warning to the others but didn't finish it before something enormous crashed through the rock overhead and plunged huge drilling point, arms-length deep into the crust of rock below.

The extremely narrow crust of rock below. With the magma flowing close beneath it.

Knuckles scrambled back and away as the metal itself heated to a red glow.

Sonic hauled him the rest of the way clear and then hesitated.

"It – doesn't seem that interested in us?"

Knuckles watched the thing.

"No. But that won't matter if it breaches the crust. It would destabilise this whole area."

"And _someone_ already wrecked the 'wading knee deep in lava' gadget..."

Knuckles glared at him. "It didn't belong here."

Sonic raised his hands.

"Okay, okay. It's your train-set."

Knuckles stared at him and was about to ask what in the skies he was gabbling about, but realised Sonic had already moved on to a new topic.

"So what do you suggest we do about it?" he asked. "I mean I'm not one to turn down a good sess of robo-smashing but that looks hot, and toasted quills smell terrible."

Knuckles stared. Fighting the urge to smash it in spite of the risk, but Sonic was right, the metal was red-hot.

I think it's fully automated," Tails said. "There's no one in there. Not even one of the bots."

"It intends to flood this area with lava." Knuckles was guessing but thought it was feasible. He knew the tunnels and this was a choke-point. If you wanted not to be followed, this was the place for it.

"Ideas?" Sonic asked again, tapping a foot.

Knuckles pointed further up the tunnel.

"Get ready to run."

Sonic scoffed and no doubt there was a remark coming about his state of readiness but Tails cut it off.

"What are you thinking?"

Knuckles crouched and raised his fists. "I'm thinking that just this once we should give it what it wants."

He leapt into the air and twisted to bring both fists down adding the force of the leap to the blow he delivered to the ground. Cracks spread and divided, fractalling out from the point of impact.

"Run!" he ordered.

No one needed telling twice and he readily grabbed Sonic's hand as it was thrown out in the split second before the hedgehog took off in an instant sprint.

Behind them the roar of expanding pressure and the shriek of metal grinding against rock was deafening, a hot wind lent both air and urgency to their headlong progress down the tunnels and away.

Knuckles bellowed directions into the slipstream, calling out a route that would take them clear of any overspill from the lava threat behind them yet contained few enough trap triggers that he trusted Sonic to traverse it at this pace.

The air cooled as they descended out of the most active area and eventually Sonic came to a stop. A steady breeze still blew along the tunnel, the heat differential forming a microclimate of its own. The moving air and the bright light from the luminescent crystals showing through the worn tunnel walls, made it easy to forget how deep underground they were now.

Tails was looking around, wide eyed.

"This is awesome."

Knuckles made a sound of agreement. This part of the Island where the natural caves slowly transitioned into the built environment of Hidden Palace was beautiful. Like some physical equivalent of the balance between chaos and control. He wished he knew whether it had been on purpose.

Even the dangers looked as thought they been designed with thought to more than functionality. Before them, and presumably the reason Sonic had stopped, fountains of flame played across the walls and floor, sweeping rhythmically back and forth with more the air of ornamental fountains than the lethal barrier they were.

"Come on." Knuckles traced a hand over a pattern on the stone which would suspend the barrier long enough for them to pass and led the others around the next turn in the tunnel which was now almost a corridor. "We're nearly-"

He stopped both speaking and moving so abruptly that Tails collided with him and he stumbled forward.

The 'no entry' signs had been a shock. What he was looking at now was more than a shock. It was abject disbelief.

The cave before them was large and filled with great sweeping pillars where the rough rocks rose and smoothed into carved pillars without ever having been quarried away from their native place. Stairways rose to the upper levels, marble and crystal constructions winding up and around and between the pillars.

Except that almost none of that was visible any more.

Scaffolding and barriers obscured most of it. Mechanisms and robots moved busily around the normally still and silent cave. Towering amid it all was some construction too large and complex for Knuckles to even take in at one glance.

He stepped back, recoiling on sheer instinct and almost treading on Tails once again. He steadied himself with one hand on the glassy-smooth stone and stared.

Sonic's hand landed on his shoulder.

"I'm guessing this is new?"

Knuckles nodded, wordless with shock and growing fury.

"Want some help smashy smashing?" Sonic asked. "Looks like plenty to go round."

Knuckles glanced at the hedgehog, who was smiling but tensed to move instantly into action.

He looked back at the cave without answering, trying to process how best to tackle it without damaging the environment itself.

"Those are heat exchangers." Tails pointed at part of the confusing tangle. "He's using geothermal energy from the volcano to power this thing."

Knuckles wasn't familiar with the terminology but knew the concept. A number of the Island's systems used it.

"Where can I hit it to cut it off?" he asked the fox. "I need to stop whatever's going on here."

Dismantling it without damage could wait, stopping it without doing further harm was was mattered firstly.

Tails pointed and all three of them ran to the machinery. The first blow caused every robot in sight to abandon its task and descend on them.

"I've got 'em," Sonic called, blithely leaping towards the incoming horde. "Keep at it."

"Here," Tails pointed and Knuckles ripped away another chunk of the machine and discarded it.

"Okay," Tails said, "I think that'll do it. We should help Sonic finish off the-"

Tails eyes widened and some instinct drove Knuckles forward without ever seeing what was coming from behind. He dived to the ground, tackling Tails bodily off his feet along with him, as a huge robot with a white-hot flamethrower where its head should be hurtled towards them.

It missed, and Sonic caught in it mid-air as it turned back for another go, dashing it against the rock wall of the cavern.

Knuckles and Tails stood up.

"Thanks," Knuckles nodded at Sonic. "Tails. Where?"

Tails returned his attention to the machinery but had only been at it a moment when a spike of alarm shot through Knuckles as though the ground had been as abruptly electrified as the rail back on the flying fortress.

He was already moving by the time Sonic asked what was wrong and stumbled to a halt because there was danger to the Island here _too_. Redirecting so much heat, drilling into the volcano in such a way could only be destabilising, but there was nothing more urgent than reaching the Master Emerald.

"I have to reach- There's something here. Right here. Robotic. But," Knuckles shook his head. "But it feels live a real person. Malevolent. I have to go. Now."

Sonic nodded, gave his shoulder and encouraging nudge. "Go then. It's okay. We got this."

Knuckles stared at him. Was he seriously considering this? But the pull was too urgent and he nodded brusquely, turned and all but fled.

He pounded towards the twisting marble and crystal stairway, hurtled up it, taking the steps two or three at a time. Alarm and fury tumbled together as he realised the was a huge section smashed away but was moving too fast to stop.

He flung himself into the air over the drop, a headlong, ballistic glide which sent him smashing into the cavern wall. He hauled himself up, hand over hand, feet kicking here and there for purchase and to further propel him.

He dragged himself over the ledge of the remaining staircase and took off into a sprint, that became a skip, hop and a jump to sidestep the trap triggers and tumbled uneven footing. He barely saw the tunnel, barely needed to, his attention was already ahead of himself already in the Hidden Palace, currently wearing its name so poorly.

* * *

Tails was still examining the machinery when Sonic returned and pointed out a spot without turning around or apparently noticing Knuckles' absence.

"There, should stop the main power take-off without causing too much damage elsewhere."

Sonic blinked. "Don't we _want_ lots of damage?"

"Not while we're standing underneath."

Sonic stifled a smile at the fox's understated response.

"You make a good point."

He launched himself at the equipment where Tails was pointing, tearing through it in a shower of sparks and the abrupt whine of spinning down machinery.

"Done and done. Now where?"

"Up." Tails said.

Up was easier said than done and Tails was only able to follow Sonic's scattershot, twisting, route by means of frequent leaps into the air. To boost him over huge drops that Sonic only cleared by landing in a hands and knees heap on the other side, to save himself from being swept backwards into a pit by a conveyor belt that Sonic easily outran, to snatch himself up and out of snapping robot jaws that Sonic spindashed straight through.

Sonic glanced often at him to be sure, but Tails was entirely adept at this sort of thing now, fearless and agile and completely unabashed when a misstep needed him to shout to Sonic for a plan B or a hasty save. In turn, Sonic had no hesitation in throwing out his arm for a save when he himself needed snatching out of trouble.

There were robots but nothing they hadn't seen before, nothing they couldn't deal with, and as they got closer and higher to the main construction if became apparent what they were looking at.

"It's a rocket." Tails came to a stop to stare and Sonic skidded to a stop several paces ahead. "He's building a _rocket_ inside the volcano!"

Sonic blinked at the thing trying to make his brain accept the scale of it.

"Knuckles is going to absolutely lose it."

Tails nodded, then frowned. "He said he didn't think Eggman was here."

Sonic shrugged. "Well his stuff is."

"Maybe," Tails said. He sounded doubtful. "He wasn't back at railhead warehouse when we looked either."

Sonic gave it some thought. It _had_ been just robots more often than usual recently. Right now though he had nothing usual to do with that information.

"Come on", he said instead. "Whatever this thing is meant to do or wherever it's meant to go we need to stop it."

"Little Planet," Tails said suddenly as they moved off again.

Sonic looked round and then up. As they climbed, more of the sky above had become visible where the crater opened onto the sky and Little Planet was indeed visible once again though it had very definitely not been when they crashed down on the Island's slopes.

Sonic scowled, thinking of the bustle of day to day life there that had already been interrupted. The lively night-time village and how willing they'd been to muddle through and work out the meaning of each other's words. Or the city filled with partying people watching the fireworks.

"No way. Not having it. Come on. Run!"

The constructions towered up and out of the volcano and soon they were running on metallic service platforms, cranes and catwalks, rather than any remaining trace of the Island's own structures.

Artificial lights flashed around then, hazard warnings, alarms ringing and, too muffled to make out words, an artificial voice boomed words in a steady rhythm.

"Sonic, I think that's a countdown!"

Sonic looked around frantically. "Uh… Open to suggestions here, buddy!"

"I don' know," Tails shouted into the slipstream. "I think- oof!"

Abruptly he was knocked back, tumbling out of the air, his hand snatched from Sonic's towing grip. Sonic screeched to a stop, and doubled back before even blinking.

Tails was doubled over on the ground, winded but struggling to regain his feet. Sonic pulled him back up. He looked around for the source of the attack and was answered sooner than he'd like as something hurtled towards them.

He didn't recognise it at first, but it came to him once he was already in mid-leap and had had a second more to think about it – it was another of the strange, elaborate robots that had plagued them since the beginning of this bizarre run-around. But riding rodeo-style on an approximation of a standard motobug attack bot. A massive heavy spiked ball and chain whirled above its head and added to the twisted robotic equivalent of a rodeo performance.

And that thing could leap! Sonic dived aside and mentally replaced 'standard' with 'severely upgraded'. He rose into a crouch and in the same breath into a spring and the second breath into a spin to catch the thing mid-air.

 _Mistake_ , he realised and yelled aloud as he discovered the hard way what was propelling those huge leaps into the air. Fiery jets scorched quills and fur and Sonic batted at them, pained and furious at himself for the error.

Tails had shot into the air out of reach and was fidgeting there looking for a viable attack line amid the flames and whirling weapon and armoured bug.

The rocket glanced up at him and Sonic seized the moment to aim a blow at the back of its head. Sending it tumbled forward off it's mount. The moto careered wildly, undirected and Tails thumped down on top of it. Sonic glanced across to check and the robot itself flung the weapon, chain and all at his head. He ducked but the moments distraction let the think slap a hand down on a control panel on the rocket and dive through a hatch.

Sonic grabbed Tails and was after it like lightning. This was the chance to get on board and stop the thing from within if they couldn't from without.

No sooner had the hatch closed behind them though than he wondered if this was another error. The robot had collapsed on the deck but the rocket was firing up regardless, the metal around them vibrating with a dull and growing hum.

"Uh oh," Tails said.

* * *

The tunnels trembled and Knuckles' breath caught in his throat in a way that had nothing to do with his desperate sprint or the desperate climb, because he knew in his bones that the earthshaking shudder had nothing to do with the Island's own tectonics.

Somewhere some machine was doing harm to the very stone and earth of the place he was meant to protect and he couldn't stop it because something worse was close, was setting his nerves alight with panic and rage and a growing terror that he was pouring so much of himself into this flat out race to reach it that he'd have nothing left to fight with when he arrived.

But here and now the touch of chaos was everywhere, in every breath and pounding pulse of blood and he drew it in with as much furious intensity as every gasping intake of air that drove him onwards.

And it was enough. He reached the Emerald chamber and it was empty yet and he had a split second to press his hands and head against the silent, soothing surface of the gem before all hell broke loose.

A bang, so loud it was painful, coincided with the largest earth tremor yet and the floor buckled violently, throwing him off his feet to crash down dazed. He leapt back to his feet again way too quickly, leaving his head spinning and nausea ripping through him.

But he needed to be on his feet because right there was the danger, right there was the strangeness he'd sensed, this robot that wasn't quite un-alive but more to the point was right there. Standing there, practically _on_ the Master Emerald. Touching and beckoning and for a moment Knuckles was struck silent and frozen in horror because despite the fact the Emerald was right there before his eyes, all he could feel was the memory of the crippling _not there._

Then the touch of cold metal against the surface cut through him like ice-water as the robot summoned down some huge vile claw and Knuckles shook off the shock and charged forward.

He leapt at the claw first and struck it in the moment after it had grabbed and raised the Emerald. It was only sheer momentum that kept him on course because the split second loss of contact had snatched breath and several heartbeats from him, in a way that the wild panicked charge through the tunnels had not.

It took every bit of willpower he had to control himself and land on his feet instead of doubled over on his knees. To keep his eyes on the robot as it took off into the air, cracking with spillover energy. To stagger clear of the blast from the stolen and corrupted chaos long enough to recover his own breath, straighten his back and re-seize control.

The thing did not belong here. It was an intrusion, a disruption to the orderly links between Island and Chaos, and Emerald and Guardian. Outrage lent strength to his blows and the initial shock was washed away in mingled adrenaline and the blood-warming, strengthening flow of the energies.

Guardian, Chaos, Island, Emerald.

Robot invaders had no place in it. Knuckles landed a blow that drove the thing into a wall. Electricity sparked and flared over the metal surfaces and Knuckles recoiled warily. Electricity though, no longer the sizzle of chaos. He could wait for his moment.

The Emerald was at his back and his feet were planted on the ancient stones and he would end any threat here.

The sparks dimmed and the robot soared back into the air, scything about itself with a beam of cutting light that left scorch marks in the stone. Knuckles slipped around and past the beam, to weave his way towards the robot itself.

Only half his attention on even on the machine. The other half attended to the Emerald, to the flows of power, to soothing the unease of the momentary uprooting, to assessing whether he needed more from it to finally eliminate the robot that had caused that unease.

He struck again and was preparing himself to use just a fraction of the power so close at hand to destroy the machine outright when it abruptly retreated. Hurtling off to the ship that had snaked out the claw, now dangling useless and in pieces beneath it.

It fled. Engines roaring abominably loud in the enclosed space and tearing off through the smashed roof of the temple which had been ripped open to the rock and to the sky.

Knuckles hesitated, one hand on the Emerald unsure for a moment, whether he sought to soothe or be soothed but hesitating either way to follow, to leave, and then the moment passed and it was in any case too late.

He breathed deep and slowly, three long breaths and closed his eyes for three more.

The Island was quiet. Still. Empty.

His eyes flew open. _Really_ empty _._

He sought actively for the flicker of chaos that was the hedgehog. It was bright with urgency but… not as close as it should have been. Fading too. Was he in trouble?

Knuckles trailed his hand up and down along the Master Emerald's surface, tracing a facet-edge before recognising and stilling the anxious fidget.

"That hedgehog is not my responsibility," he tried out loud. But the thought wouldn't stick and he couldn't pull his attention from that fading flicker.

He sighed and pulled his hand away from the Emerald, breaking into a jog and letting his feet carry him to the nearest warp point. He paused a second to gather his wits beside it. There was no corresponding receiving end wherever Sonic was, and that would have have been a problem to anyone except a Guardian, but Knuckles had spent his whole life learning to direct power he didn't fully understand and he he could direct this too.

He composed himself and stepped up on the sunlight-warm orb as the power gathered within it.

There was none of the sick twirl of disorientation that the Ruby-driven teleporting inflicted. This was as easy as waking. Between one eye-blink and the next he was where the hedgehog was and Sonic was staring at him. Unharmed and open mouthed.

Tails was even wider-eyed.

"Wow! What?"

Knuckles frowned. They were both fine and that was incredibly irritating. He felt stupid. Why had he been so convinced they were in trouble?

"I thought..." He started and then with a wave of dismay the reason he'd felt as though Sonic was fading away to nothing. What he'd misread as some terrible mortal wound was simply distance.

Wherever the were, they were rapidly ascending away from the Island.

Acceleration tried to buckle his knees beneath him and Tails actually did sit down with a thud. Sonic staggered a moment made a face and sat down deliberately, and tugged on Knuckles' arm to encourage him to do the same.

"Might not be a bad idea," he said. "Not sure how rough the ride's going to get."

Knuckles sat and his lack of protest made Sonic give him a strange look.

"You okay? Want to trade explanations on the way?"

Knuckles sighed.


End file.
